


Elegy for the Living

by cleflink



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Jensen is sexy with a guitar, M/M, Quest, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-18
Updated: 2012-11-18
Packaged: 2017-11-18 22:51:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/566158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleflink/pseuds/cleflink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Great,” Jensen muttered. “I’m going into the Underworld to get my best friend's soul back armed with the power of song. How could that possibly go wrong?”</i> A modern myth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elegy for the Living

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [spn_reversebang](www.spn_reversebang.livejournal.com)'s 2012 round. Massive kudos and thank yous to the lovely and talented [becc-j](www.becc-j.livejournal.com) with whom I had the pleasure and honour to collaborate this round. I loved her prompt from the moment I saw/heard it; it was gorgeous and intriguing and gave me the opportunity to work with three things I love: J2, Greek mythology and _Spirited Away_. A million thank yous, my dear - it's been an absolute delight working with you! Go check out her fantastic [art post](http://becc-j.livejournal.com/12749.html) and tell her how amazing she is! 
> 
> This story is influenced by both the [myth of Orpheus and Eurydice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus#Death_of_Eurydice) and the Studio Ghibli film [_Spirited Away_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245429/). It is not necessary to have knowledge of either to read this.

Jensen's best friend was an _asshole_.

"I'm going to kill him," Jensen muttered to himself, staring at the door like he could make Jared appear in it through sheer force of will. "Strangle him and toss his body off the damn roof. _Twice_."

"Sounds pretty serious," a voice said and Jensen turned to find Steve, the owner of the bar, standing just behind him with an easy sort of grin on his face. "Someone out there I need to warn?"

Jensen shook his head. A combination of nerves and disappointment teamed up to make the move jerky and unbalanced. "He'd need to be here first."

"Ah," Steve said, with an understanding little nod. "Jared running late?"

"Who knows," Jensen said without thinking, and immediately had the uncomfortable thought that he meant that in more ways than one. He flashed Steve a smile he didn't really mean. "His loss, hey?"

"It's not a show I'd want to miss," was all Steve said. He tilted his head. "You about ready to go on? The natives are starting to get restless."

Jensen rolled his shoulders reflexively, feeling the familiar bulk of his guitar shift in time. "Yeah, I'm ready," he said, because fuck Jared if he thought Jensen was going to put off his performance to make up for Jared's late ass.

Any more than he already had, anyway.

"Get yourself on up there, then," Steve said, with a nod towards the stage at the far end of the bar. "I'll get things squared off over here."

Jensen smiled again, and this time the expression was tinged with the eager excitement that had been bubbling up inside him all day. He'd been looking forward to this for _months_. "Hope you enjoy it, man."

Steve shrugged easily. "Wouldn't have offered if I didn't think I would." He waved a hand. "Now go play us some magic."

Jensen nodded and started making his way across the room, nodding his greeting at the people in the crowd whom he recognized. There were a decent number of them, though Jensen doubted he could identify more than a handful by name. In any other place, he'd have found that odd, but it was pretty well par for the course for the crowd at _Roads_ ; God only knew how far most of them had traveled just to be here.

No one ever seemed to be able to find words to explain exactly what it was that was so appealing about the place, but there was no denying that _Roads_ was renowned as _the_ place for good food, good company and amazing music across a good three states, if not further. For Jensen, stepping into _Roads_ was like a full-body experience: it left him feeling satisfied inside and out, completely at ease with the world. 

Jensen climbed onto the stage without ceremony, though it was hard to suppress the urge to do a victorious little fist pump as he sat down in front of the mic. He had seen many a ridiculously talented performer on this stage over the years and, though he had plenty of faith in his own skills, he'd never quite believed he was ever going to be one of them.

Music had always been Jensen's true gift. As a child, he'd been singing almost before he finished learning how to speak and he'd taken to his music lessons like he'd been born with a violin propped under his chin, a saxophone mouthpiece between his lips and piano keys dancing under his fingers. All of his instructors had lauded him as a prodigy, had had grand visions of award winning performances and international acclaim, but Jensen had never been interested in competing, so he hadn't. From what he'd heard, several of them were still quite upset about that.

As Jensen had grown older, he'd been told - by more people than just his mother - that he could have a career in mainstream music if he applied himself. There had actually been a few talent agents and record companies that had scouted him when he first went on the amateur circuit in college, but Jensen had never been interested in that either. For him, music was about breathing life into the world, not about making money. If he could live comfortably on the salary from his day job and still have time to make music on his own terms, he didn't see any reason to do otherwise.

So Jensen kept his musical aspirations simple. He stayed on the local music scene, doing odd gigs here and there when he felt like it. He wrote and played in his spare room-cum-music studio for hours on end. He sat on a bench in the park down the street from his house with whatever instrument had caught his fancy that day and played until he got hungry or tired enough to go home.

He met with varying shades of disapproval from the people in his life, most of whom thought he was wasting his talent where he was now. There had only ever been one person who'd known better, who'd understood that music was never wasted, not when it was honest and played with purpose. 

Jared had been Jensen's friend since they were kids and Jensen's mother had insisted that Jensen teach the neighbours' son how to play the piano. Jared had turned out to have all the musical talent of a bucket, but they'd somehow managed to become fast friends anyway. Since then, their friendship had survived the four year age gap between them - which had been a crippling distance when they were in high school -, rooming together while Jared was in college - which had nearly driven them both to homicide on more than one occasion -, Jared's rather explosive coming out - which had given Jensen the dual opportunity to admit that he was mostly bi and to mock Jared for his shit taste in men -, Jensen moving to another state for work - which had made the both of them miserable and had led to them coordinating their next jobs so that they were in the same city -, and all the little everyday nuisances that made friendship such a wonderful pain in the ass. 

Which was why Jared's recent inability to spend more than ten minutes in Jensen's company felt like someone had sucked all the air out of Jensen's lungs and then punched him in the face for good measure.

At first, Jensen had thought that it might have been a boy. Jared was a friendly sort of guy and he'd never had much trouble gaining admirers. He'd had a couple of serious relationships over the years, though recently he hadn't been doing much dating at all that Jensen had noticed.

If there _was_ a new someone in Jared's life, Jensen would be manfully hurt that Jared hadn't told him, but he would at least be able to give a reason for the disappearing act.

But Jared wasn't acting like a man in love. Mopey and sort of moony, sure, but those weren't signs of dating. None of Jared's other friends seemed to think there was anything wrong with him, though the sidelong glances they gave Jensen when they didn't think he was looking made it pretty clear that they knew more than they were letting on. And, whatever it was, it looked like it was Jensen's fault.

The worse part was that Jensen didn't even know what he'd _done_. Jared had started drifting away so slowly that Jensen hadn't really noticed until he found himself alone at the park for the third weekend in a row, another flimsy excuse from Jared waiting in his inbox when he got home that afternoon.

Probably, Jensen should have done something about it then, but he'd been busy enough at work and irritated enough with Jared that he decided to give Jared the space he obviously wanted. Jared would get over himself sooner or later.

Except, he didn't. Jared grew more distant with each passing day and Jensen grew progressively closer to punching the bastard in the face until he told him what the fuck was going on. A couple of times, Jensen had thought that Jared was nerving himself up to say something, but those strange, tentative silences had never been filled. 

Jensen had hoped that tonight would be different. Had hoped that, whatever else was going on, that Jared would at least have come to see him play here, at _Roads_. Jared knew just how important this was to Jensen; he'd sat here beside Jensen week after week while Jensen got lost in music so beautiful it was almost otherworldly, he'd seen Jensen's giddy reaction to Steve's offer, he'd always known just how much the music mattered to him.

But he wasn't here. And Jensen felt like a fool.

Finished tuning, Jensen took a deep, deliberate breath, looking for the place inside him that wasn't aching over Jared's sudden disinterest in all things Jensen. Then he released it, smiled at the audience and, without bothering with something so mundane as an introduction, let his music speak for itself.

\---

It was much later. Last call had come and gone, the last few patrons had weaved their ways homeward, and Jensen was sharing a last drink with Steve in recognition of a set fucking well played, when the door banged open and Jared burst through - harried, sheepish and breathing hard like he'd run from the closest subway station.

"Jensen!" Jared started forward and, even from a room's length away, Jensen recognized the placating smile on his face. He'd seen far too much of it, recently.

Jared had changed out of his work clothes, Jensen noticed. Instead of a suit and tie, he was wearing a pair of worn-in jeans and his favourite shirt that he'd bought at the _Our Lady Peace_ concert he dragged Jensen to a couple years ago. The thing was practically falling apart, he'd worn it so often, and the thin material hugged lovingly across Jared's broad shoulders. It was a good look for him, casual and confident, but mostly it felt like a reminder that, while Jensen's always made time for Jared - even at the expense of going to see fucking alt rock bands - Jared didn't care enough to do the same for Jensen anymore.

Suddenly, it was much easier to push aside the hurt and turn to the anger lurking beneath it.

Jensen set his half-full glass on the bar with a low tap and met Jared's sheepish expression with a bland one of his own. He crossed his arms over his chest. "You're late."

"I know. I'm sorry." Jared took a careful few steps closer. "I- how did it go?"

"Good," Jensen said neutrally. Out of the corner of his eye, Jensen saw Steve sliding away towards the back room, probably to give them space. "Really good."

"That's great, J-"

"Not that you care."

Jared's smile faltered. "Jensen, that's… you know that's not true, right?"

Jensen refused to soften. "Can't say I do, actually. Seems like there's a lot about my life you don't care about, these days."

"Look, I'm sorry," Jared said again, as though apologizing more than once showed that he really meant it. Considering how often he'd apologized for blowing Jensen off recently, Jensen figured he must be feeling pretty damn sorry by now. 

Just not enough to stop ignoring the fact that Jensen existed. 

"Sheppard caught me on my way out of the office tonight," Jared said, in his 'reasonable' tone of voice. The one he used on clients. Jensen's blood pressure ratcheted higher. "He made me do a full recount of _Yubaba Corp_ 's financial-"

"Bullshit."

The word was in the air before Jensen'd realized he was going to say it, but he couldn't bring himself to regret the sentiment. Especially when it made Jared's eyes widen while something like guilt lent tension to his shoulders.

Not that that was going to stop Jared from trying to get out of it. "I'm serious, Jensen, I-"

Jensen held up a hand. "No. Don't give me any of that crap. You haven't been to one of my shows in months."

"Yes I have," Jared protested and Jensen snorted derisively. 

"Yeah. _After_ they'd already ended." Jensen was distantly amazed that it had taken them this long to get to this point. He should have done something months ago.

Jared was starting to look defensive. "God, Jensen, it's not my fault the boss dumped a shit ton of work on me at five to five."

"But it's your fucking fault you didn't even text me about it, you spineless bastard," Jensen snapped. "And don't even try to tell me that whatever the boss gave you needed you working on it till _midnight_ on a Friday night. You've got the day off, tomorrow, for God's sake."

"And maybe I don't want to spend it in the office," Jared shot back.

A frisson of hurt tried to slice through the anger. Jensen pushed it back ruthlessly. "So you'd rather miss my show. Again. Big plans for tomorrow, then? Hope you have fun." 

"Give me a break, Jensen. I've been working all day and the last thing I want to do is get yelled at. I'm here, aren't I?"

"Oh, I'm _sorry_. Here I was thinking that you might have wanted to give me some moral support at my gig, which was really important to me, by the way. In case you didn't hear me any of the first six hundred times I said it. Guess I should have known better."

Jared ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "Look, I'm not dealing with you when you're like this. I'm sorry I missed your show. I'll make the next one, I promise."

"Seems like that's all you ever say these days." Jensen took a deep breath, fighting to get his temper under control. His voice came out far more vulnerable than he'd hoped when he asked, "Why are you avoiding me, Jared?"

Jared's expression faltered, something aching and lonely flashing across his face before an ugly sneer got pasted over top. "Maybe if you weren't such a jackass when I do see you, I'd want to do it more often," he snapped. "Ever think of that?"

"Me?" Jensen stared at him, shocked. "The hell have I done? _You're_ the one who decided that… that fucking paperwork was more interesting than I was. Than my _music_ was. I remember when you used to like my playing, you know."

Jared shook his head. "I- I can't…"

"Can't what, Jared?" Jensen got right up in Jared's space, a snarl curling his lips. "If you don't want to know me, Jared, at least have the balls to tell me to my face."

"You know what? Fuck you." Jared turned and headed for the door, his spine ramrod straight and his fists clenched. 

"Should I go ahead a rip up that 'best friend' certificate from third grade now, or do you want to wait for the anniversary of when we met?" Jensen shouted after him.

"Fuck off!" Jared shouted over his shoulder, letting the door slam loudly behind him.

"Oh, no you don't." Jensen strode across the room and banged out the door on Jared's heels. "Get back here! Jared!" 

The ground was slick and gleaming in the wake of an earlier rain and the light from the streetlamps cast orange-purple circles across the dark asphalt. Jared was marching across the street in quick, straight-legged strides and giving absolutely no indication that he'd even heard him.

"Nice to know I don't even deserve an explanation!" Jensen shouted after Jared's retreating back. "Why won't you just talk to me, you asshole?"

"Because I can't stand listening to you play!" Jared roared, and his heels made a sharp, skidding sound as he whirled.

Silence fell like a thunderclap between them, but Jensen could barely tell amid the roaring in his ears. "What?" he said, staggering back as though Jared had punched him. "Jared?"

Jared's chest was heaving with the same adrenaline that had been pushing Jensen all night and Jensen wished it hadn't been too damn dark to make out Jared's expression. Jared stood there for an eternal moment, then nodded once and turned away again.

Jensen stared after him, frozen in place by the loss rising up his throat. He opened his mouth, but the words died before he'd even figured out what they were going to be. What the hell could he say to that?

Something flashed in the dark on his left, a reflection there and gone in a second, and Jensen's eyes dragged instinctively towards it. It was a car, the light from the streetlamps glinting off the windshield as it careered erratically around the corner, far too quickly on the rain-soaked pavement.

Jared was still in the road.

Jensen's heart thudded, twice, far too long.

"Jared!" he screamed.

Wheels skidded, brakes screeched, and Jensen watched in horror as Jared was flung up against the windshield, his body colliding with the glass with a fleshy smack that was going to haunt Jensen's dreams for years.

The car fishtailed wildly as the driver fought for control; Jared's body rolled and skidded across the roof, then tumbled limply over the opposite side. Jensen was running before he'd even registered the sound of Jared hitting the pavement, heedless of the car peeling off into the darkness. 

Jared was crumpled on the ground, head thrown back at an awkward angle and arms and legs spread in a grotesque parody of his usual exuberant sprawl. There was blood on his face, and more soaking through his shirt. He wasn't moving.

Jensen couldn't get enough air.

He was on his knees without any clear idea of how he'd got there, caught by the way Jared's eyes had gone glassy and strange in the orange light. Jared's shoulders felt impossibly solid under Jensen's fingers: too strong to be lying so still. Jared was never so still. 

"Jared!" Jensen said, fighting the urge to shake him until he stopped fucking around and got up. "Jared, man, look at me." Jared's head lolled back, exposing the impossibly fragile curve of his neck. His shirt was ruined. He was gonna be pissed about that when he woke up, would probably make Jensen go to another damn concert so he could buy another one. "God, Jared."

Blood pressure. Jensen should be checking his blood pressure.

"You're gonna be okay," Jensen told him, scrabbling for his wrist. "You hear me? It's all gonna be fine." Jensen's hands wouldn't stop shaking and how the fuck was Jensen supposed to take Jared's pulse if he couldn't keep his hands still? "I got ya, don't worry."

Jared's skin was warm to the touch but still a little clammy from the damp of the night. Jensen couldn't feel a pulse. 

Jared still wasn't moving.

"No, no, no," someone said, and Jensen hardly even cared that it was him. "You don't get to do this to me, you bastard. Open your eyes, godammit! Jared!"

A hand landed on Jensen's shoulder and he half-jumped out of his skin, would probably have managed it if his entire being hadn't been focused on Jared.

"Jensen," the hand said. "He's-"

Jensen shook his head. "Shut up." 

"I'm sorry, Jensen, bu-"

"I said shut up!" Jensen roared, voice cracking around the words. He leaned in close to Jared's ear. "Come on, Jared," he said, low and entreating. "Open your eyes. Please, just… please."

He waited expectantly. Jared didn't move.

Jensen stared at him. "Jared?"

The hand gave Jensen a shake. "Jensen. It's too late. We can't do anything for him."

His fingers were in Jared's hair, Jensen noticed absently, threading through the long strands and catching on random tangles. There were a lot of them.

"Always said that haircut was a dumb idea," Jensen said and then he was crying, choking around the hot pain in his chest while tears tracked down his face like fire. He doubled over and kept sinking until he had his forehead pressed against Jared's chest. Right where his heartbeat should have been.

"Let's get him out of the road," the voice said, maybe more than once. Jensen wasn't really listening. The hand disappeared from Jensen's shoulder and reappeared on Jared's hip. "Help me lift him."

Mindlessly, Jensen obeyed. Between him and the hands, they got Jared off the ground and carried him. Some of Jared's bones slid sickeningly under his skin when Jensen tried for a more comfortable angle and Jensen fought the urge to throw up. He followed the voice's directions up over the curb, into a building and through a door.

"Put him down here," the voice said and Jensen absently registered the bump when they lay Jared on a low couch that wasn't quite long enough to keep his feet from dangling off the end. That wasn't unusual; Jensen had bought an extra-long couch for his house to make sure that Jared fit on it.

"Let go of him, Jensen," the voice said.

Jensen did. His hands came away red.

There was a sigh from somewhere nearby. "Sit down before you fall down."

A chair nudged at the back of Jensen's legs and he dropped into it, never taking his eyes off Jared.

"You take some time. I'll be right here. Okay?"

"Okay," Jensen answered blankly.

On the couch, Jared didn't move.

\---

It could have been five minutes or five days later when Jensen blinked his eyes and looked around to discover that he was sitting in Steve's back room at _Roads_. Jared was laid out on the couch, bloody and broken. Steve was leaning against a desk a few feet away, watching Jensen.

"Steve?" Jensen croaked.

Steve smiled a somber sort of smile. "Back with us, are you?"

Jensen nodded. He sat for a long moment. "Jared's dead," he said, testing the words. They fell like lead into the air.

Steve nodded. "Yes, he is. I'm sorry."

Jensen thought about that. "It's my fault."

"No, it isn't."

"Of course it is!" Jensen glared at Steve, daring him to object. "I'm the one who chased him out of the bar. Hell, I'm the reason he was here in the first place. It is _my_ fault."

Steve's expression stayed mild. "Were you driving that car?"

"It doesn't matter!" Jensen's chair clattered to the floor and he braced his feet wide, entire body bracing for an attack that wouldn't come. He balled his hands into fists, almost shaking with tension. "I'm still the one who's got to spend the rest of his life knowing that he got into a stupid fight with his best friend and got him, got him run over by a fucking… _Christ_."

Jensen bit his lip hard, bringing his hand up over his mouth. "My best friend's dead. How do I even… I'm gonna have to tell his parents," he realized, and the thought shocked him cold. He stared helplessly at Steve, feeling like the whole weight of how lost he felt was reflecting in his eyes. "How the hell do I do that? I can't. I can't do that to them. I've known them since I was _eleven_. How can I tell them that their son's, that _Jared_ is…?" Jensen swallowed back a sob. "This shouldn't be real. Why isn't this a nightmare?"

He shuddered hard, fighting not to panic underneath the weight of too many sharp emotions. Once he'd wrestled his breathing back under control, he lifted his eyes back to Steve's and found him staring back with an expression that was considerably closer to thoughtful than sympathetic.

Jensen swiped self-consciously at his face. "Sorry," he said, gritty and raw. "You don't want to watch me fall apart. Just, ah, give me a minute? I'll… I'll figure something out. Did you call the police?"

Christ, he hadn't even thought to check the car's plate number. Jensen was sure he was going to regret that when there was room in his mind for anything other than 'Jared, Jared, Jared'.

He squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his hands until his fingers ached and his nails dug stinging crescents in his palms. "God, Steve, what the hell am I supposed t-"

"Would you fight for him?"

"…What? The hell kind of question is that?" 

Steve's calm didn't waver. "An important one. If it could bring him back, would you fight for him?"

"Of course I w-"

"Don't take this lightly," Steve warned. "I'm being very serious and I want a real answer. Not lip service, not guilt, not the kind of person you wish you were. Would you risk your life to recover Jared's?"

"Yes," Jensen said and it was an answer as easy as breathing. "Always, yes."

Steve nodded. "Good. I can fix the body," he said offhandedly, and Jensen flinched at the thought of Jared being a 'body'. "But it won't do much good without the soul. You want him back, you've got to go to the afterlife to get it."

Jensen's jaw tightened. "That's not funny."

"No, it's not," Steve agreed.

"And just how am I supposed to do that? Jump off the fucking roof and make it a murder-suicide?"

Steve snorted. "Only if you want to make it a one-way trip. And it was hardly murder. I can show you how to get there," he continued, as casually as if he was talking about the weather. "But the rest will be up to you."

Something about the patient certainty on his face drew Jensen up short. "You're serious, aren't you," he said. "Jesus Christ, you're actually serious."

"Yes, I am. And, no, I'm not crazy, before you ask. I just have a certain amount of," an amused little smile played about Steve's lips, "proficiency in this area."

"In resurrection?" Jensen demanded and cringed at the way his voice squeaked.

Steve shrugged. "Something like that."

Jensen stared at him for a long moment. "Let me get this straight. You want me to go to Heaven and get Jared's soul back?"

"Don't be so binary," Steve said. "This isn't a Heaven versus Hell debate. You're going to the afterlife. The Underworld, specifically."

"Fine. So you want me to go to the 'Underworld' to get Jared's soul back?"

"I don't actually _want_ you to do anything. I am, however, giving you the opportunity to go the Underworld to win Jared's soul back, if you want to."

"Right." Jensen was feeling a little light-headed. He sat down heavily. "Is this going to kill me?" he asked.

"I hope not."

"Great. That's reassuring, thanks." Jensen dimly heard the way his voice was rising, edging towards hysteria. "You sure you're not crazy? I mean, not that you'd tell me if you were, but this is totally crazy. How do I know this isn't some kind of, of suicide cult or som-"

"Jensen," Steve said, in a voice that had Jensen's mouth clicking shut immediately. "Yes or no?"

Jensen swallowed hard, shoving back the panic still trying to claw its way up his throat. He looked at Steve, who was looking as steady and serene as he always did. Then he looked at where Jared was lying, eyes closed, face ashen, body lax. That was Jensen's fault. If Jensen didn't do this, it would be his fault twice over. And Jared would never wake up.

Jensen didn't think he could live in a world where Jared never woke up.

He squared his shoulders. "Yes."

"Good. Here.” Steve thrust a thin slip of paper at Jensen. “You’ll need it for the train.”

“Train?” Jensen asked, taking the paper. It was a faded green ticket with black lettering, one of those cheap tokens that arcade games spat out. He couldn't make out any of the writing besides the _Admit One_ emblazoned across the middle and some word underneath that started with the letter 'a'. 

Jensen glanced up at Steve. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Give it to the ticket taker,” Steve said, as though that made all the sense in the world. He tilted his wrist to look at his watch. “You’d better get going. Jared's shade is way ahead of you. Don’t want to have to wait for the next train.”

“Go where?” Jensen demanded. "What train?"

Instead of answering, Steve walked over to a dilapidated old bookshelf in the corner of the room. Jensen trailed along after him, more than a little sick of this cryptic crap.

"Seriously, Steve, can you just tell me what's g-"

Steve crouched down and grabbed a thick brass ring set into the floor. The muscles in his arm flexed as he hauled upwards and Jensen felt his jaw drop when a whole section of the floor came up with it, dust flaking off the sides and pattering to the side as darkness yawned up in the space left behind. Jensen could see the sketchy outline of a set of stone stairs working its way down into the earth.

"What the hell?!"

“It’s just a trapdoor, Jensen,” Steve said, lazily amused. “The real fun hasn’t even started yet.”

“That wasn’t there a minute ago,” Jensen protested. The trapdoor was a good four feet square and made of darkly pitted wooden slats that stood out in sharp contrast to the dull linoleum flooring. There was no way Jensen could have missed it.

Steve shrugged. “Guess not. Not really your problem right now, though. Take the train to the end of the line.” He gestured at the silly strip of paper still in Jensen’s fist. “They won’t let you on without a ticket, so don’t lose it.”

Jensen’s head was spinning. "But what am I supposed to do when I get there? You can’t just walk into the Underworld and get people, can you?”

“No. You’re gonna have to convince the bossman to release Jared's shade.”

Jensen stared at him. “I’m going to go talk to the _devil_?!”

“Of course not," Steve said matter-of-factly. "There's only one ruler of the dead. None of this good versus evil stuff."

“So I’m meeting God?”

“You’re meeting _a_ god. So be polite, okay? Keep a hold of that too,” Steve added, and Jensen was confused until Steve gestured at the guitar that Jensen still had slung across his back. It felt like a million years since his set. “It’ll probably come in handy.”

“Great,” Jensen muttered. “I’m going into the Underworld to get my best friend's soul back armed with the power of song. How could that possibly go wrong?”

That earned him a smile. “You might surprise yourself.”

“I'm glad one of us has faith in this plan. How long have I got before people notice I’m missing and come banging down your door and you get arrested for having a dea-… Jared on your couch?"

Steve waved a dismissive hand. "Don’t worry about that. Time works differently down there; we’ll be here when you come back."

"Right. So? Anything else?"

"Yes." Steve’s expression went grave. "The Underworld’s not a place where people's shades lament the end of life. The more time shades spend in the Underworld, the less they remember about their lives Above. Eventually, the Underworld becomes the only reality they know."

"So I've got to get to Jared before he forgets too much?"

Steve shook his head. "It's more than that. If you take too long, _you're_ going to forget that you're alive. And if that happens, you'll forget to come back. Permanently."

Jensen swallowed. "You're serious?"

"I am." 

"Oh."

Jensen's eyes flicked over to the couch. From this angle, he could almost pretend that Jared was only sleeping, if it wasn't for the unnatural slump of his arm over the side of the couch, or the slowly rusting stains on his shirt. He turned to face the cellar door, squinting down into the darkness below like he could see what was down there if he just looked hard enough.

"Oh," Steve said, and Jensen turned towards him. "One more thing. Don't eat anything down there, no matter who gives it to you." Unexpectedly, he grinned. "Even if it's me." 

"O-kay?"

"Good man." Steve's hand settled on Jensen's shoulders in quiet support. "This is it. Good luck, Jensen."

Still not entirely sure that one or both of them wasn't crazy, Jensen managed an awkward smile back. "Thanks." He turned back towards the trapdoor, took one final, deep breath and started down the stairs into the darkness.

The air beyond the trapdoor was surprisingly fresh considering that Jensen was probably heading into a cellar, and the dirt walls were cool under the brush of Jensen's fingers. His shoes made a faint scuffing sound on the worn stone steps.

Jensen had only been walking for a few minutes when the light vanished abruptly from above him. The ominous thud of the trapdoor made him shudder. 

Now that the trapdoor was shut, the darkness around him was absolute. Jensen couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face, let alone where the next step was. He put one hand on the rough, packed surface of the wall and edged carefully downwards.

The sound of Jensen’s footsteps echoed loudly in the dark as he went down, down, down, one slow step at a time to keep from tripping down the stairs and breaking his neck. The strap of his guitar bit uncomfortably into his skin.

There was no warning before Jensen hit the bottom of the staircase. He stumbled on the suddenly level ground under his feet and promptly clocked his head against something solid and unpleasantly hard.

"Fucking hell," he swore, rubbing against his sore nose.

A quick inspection of the obstacle revealed a doorknob by his right hip. Jensen gave it a twist and a shove and the door's hinges groaned in protest as they followed the movement.

Light sliced through the darkness and Jensen brought up one hand to shield his eyes as he walked through the door. A touch of fresh air brushed across his face.

Gradually, his eyes adjusted to the light and Jensen blinked at his surroundings, trying to see where he’d ended up.

And immediately wondered if he’d hit his head harder than he'd thought. 

He was outside, in the middle of a flat, grassy field that stretched as far as he could see in every direction. The sky overhead was blue and liberally dotted with white, idyllically fluffy clouds. Jensen was standing on a dirt path that wound its way generally forwards and disappeared into the distance. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

Jensen turned and found himself facing a closed door that looked older than he was, standing in the middle of the path behind him like someone had dropped it out of the sky. Beyond it, grass and blue sky stretched out into infinity. There was no sign of the staircase that Jensen had taken down. 

There was also no doorknob.

Jensen pounded at the door a couple of times just for the sake of it, before giving it up as a bad job. He wasn't getting out that way.

"Right then. Mysterious dirt path it is." Jensen turned away from the door, hitched his guitar into a more comfortable position, and started walking.

\---

It wasn’t long before a smear of gray appeared on the horizon and, as Jensen drew closer, it resolved itself into a small, old-fashioned train platform. A gleaming line of tracks ran off on either side of it, incongruously bright against the dirt and placidly still grass. The platform itself was made of large, squared-off stone blocks. It sported a short set of steps, a signpost with no words on it and an uncomfortable-looking wooden bench. There was a man sat on the far end of the bench who had his hands folded neatly in his lap and his attention fixed on the horizon. 

Jensen climbed up to the platform. "Hi," he said to the guy, who was maybe 30 at the most. "This place is kind of crazy, huh?"

The guy didn’t so much as twitch in Jensen’s direction, just continued staring out at nothing.

"Ookay." Jensen sat down at the opposite end of the bench, unslinging his guitar so he could lean back. The familiar weight of it was comforting in his lap and Jensen strummed a few absent chords, not trying to make a song so much as wanting to hear something other than his own voice. The smooth, melancholy notes drifted through the air, tinged with regret despite Jensen's every effort not to think about anything at all.

Gradually, Jensen became aware that the man on the bench was watching him as he played, his expression flat and his eyes fixed intently on Jensen’s hands.

"You play?" Jensen asked, but didn’t receive a response. "Hey, guy. You in there?"

The man’s expression didn’t so much as flicker and Jensen sighed.

"Never mind."

Jensen played for a time, taking quiet comfort in the well-worn notes. Eventually, another sound intruded and Jensen glanced up to see a train traveling along the tracks, heading their way. It was painted a bright, fire-engine red and looked like an old-fashioned steam train except for the fact that there wasn't any smoke rising from the smokestack. 

Jensen stopped playing and stood, shifting impatiently back and forth on his heels. As soon as he lifted his hands from the strings, the other man turned his attention away from Jensen and towards the train.

The train was impossibly quiet as it pulled to a stop, silent except for a hiss of steam from the engine. A set of automatic doors slid open to admit them and Jensen blinked.

So far, seemed like the Underworld was an existential crisis in progress.

An elderly man, stooped, gaunt and wearing a suit that was nearly as old as he was, appeared in the open doorway.

"Ticket," he said. 

The other guy presented his ticket and the ticket taker fed the it into a machine set into the wall just inside the door. A green light blinked on and the guy climbed aboard.

Jensen rifled through his pocket for the green scrap of paper Steve had given him and handed it over. The ticket taker gave Jensen a long, measuring look and Jensen did his best to look dead, or whatever passed for it around here. 

After a moment, the man accepted Jensen’s proffered ticket and Jensen let out a careful, quietly relieved breath. His ticket went into the machine, the light pinged green and the ticket taker stepped back to let Jensen on the train.

Jensen stepped gingerly aboard and the doors snapped shut behind him, close enough to make him jump. The ticket taker vanished through a door at the head of the car and Jensen stumbled as the train jolted into motion. The platform slid away behind them and acres of endless grass and sky filled the space beyond the windows.

There were a half dozen or so people on the train, all sat separately and staring straight ahead. Jensen couldn't tell if they were looking out the windows on the opposite side of the train or at nothing at all.

"Hello?" Jensen tried and was confused when none of them so much as twitched. "Can any of you hear me?"

The silence persisted and Jensen crouched down in front of the closest passenger – a woman in her late sixties, with silvery hair and arthritis-gnarled fingers – and waved his hand in front of her face. He got no reaction whatsoever.

He huffed out a sigh. "Look. The ticket guy could see me, so I know I’m not invisible. Enough with the ignoring me bullshit."

Jensen leaned in closer until he was practically nose-to-nose with the woman, trying to catch even the slightest dilation in her pupils to suggest that she could see him. 

It was about then that Jensen realized he could see through her.

His ass hit the floor and Jensen scrabbled backwards with his hands and heels. He stared up at the woman, watching with a morbid sort of fascination at the pattern of the seat cushions showing through her arm, the hint of blue sky colouring her sallow cheeks. A quick look around revealed that all of the other people – no, not people; shades, Steve had called them – had the same solid, but not entirely there quality to them. And it wasn't just their skin: their clothes, hair, shoes, everything was faded and faint, like an underexposed photo. 

"Jesus Christ," Jensen muttered to himself as he got to his feet and claimed a seat on the far side of the car. "This quest just keeps getting better and better. I can't wait to see what comes next."

\---

What came next was a long period of Jensen staring out the window at the unchanging landscape and being really bored. The green plains slid by, mile after indistinguishable mile, and only the steady progression of the clouds across the sky let Jensen know for certain that the train was actually moving at all. 

Every now and then they'd pull up alongside a platform and the ticket taker would appear to usher groups of newly-dead shades aboard the train. Jensen watched as green tickets got handed over and the train grew slowly, steadily more full. The increase in passengers and resulting decrease in personal space did nothing to encourage conversation - or eye contact - among the shades. Jensen couldn't really say he was surprised.

Jensen settled into a kind of absent daze, lulled by the rhythmic stop-start of the train and an evening full of emotional exhaustion. He felt more than heard it when the thrum of the engine grew deeper after they left one of the platforms; they were speeding up. The train started picking up speed and Jensen looked out the window, watching the clouds turn to fuzzy smears of white across the sky. 

A bolt of blue flashed in Jensen's peripheral vision and he glanced up to see the green fields ahead of them being swallowed up by a massive body of sparkling water. The train barreled towards it at a truly alarming rate, showing absolutely no sign of slowing. Jensen had a brief moment of 'oh, shit' before they hit the edge of the water and he scrabbled at the closest window for a hinge or a lever or _something_ that would get him out before he drowned.

Several tense, heart thudding moments passed before Jensen realized that the train was still moving, still above the water. He twisted round to press his face up against the window, trying to figure out what was going on.

Crystal blue water stretched out from horizon to horizon, the surface placid and calm. The train was moving easily along with only the wheels and the lower part of the carriage in the water; if Jensen rose up on his knees and turned his eyes awkwardly downwards, he could just make out the glint of the rails under the surface of the water. The dark, deep blue of the water on either side of them suggested that the rest of the water wasn't nearly so shallow, though.

The water quickly grew to be nearly as monotonous as the grass, so Jensen amused himself by watching the water surge against the sides of the train and send ripples spreading out in its wake. There were no more platforms, which made it hard for Jensen to judge how long they'd been traveling, or how far the water was stretching. His watch had stopped somewhere between Steve's back room and the train platform, which was no help at all.

The transition to the next stage of the train's journey was abrupt and striking. Darkness loomed on the horizon, approaching quickly, and Jensen had hardly turned his eyes in the right direction before they plunged into a tunnel. Everything beyond the train was pitch black and silent and Jensen slumped into his seat with a huff. At this rate, he was going to die of tedium before they got there.

Happily for Jensen's continued sanity, the tunnel portion of their trip was short-lived. Darkness turned to brilliance between one moment and the next and the engine's heartbeat hitched and slowed as they pulled up to a platform that was considerably more interesting than the other ones Jensen had seen thus far.

There was still nothing but rock on Jensen's side of the train, so he rose and crossed over to the opposite bank of windows. The platform was large and expansive, made of a pale, gleaming stone, and teeming with shades. Instead of grass, Jensen could see a mass of streets and buildings stretched out in the distance. 

The automatic doors slid open.

"Asphodel!" a voice hollered somewhere outside. "Final stop!"

Jensen was the first one off the train and he blinked at the mad bustle of activity on the platform: some shades pushed past with briefcases in hand, while others clustered in groups and blocked the way for shades angling towards the ticket booths at the nearest end of the platform. The air was full of clattering footsteps, strange and jarring without the murmur of voices laid overtop. If Jensen craned his neck, he could just about see the road at the edge of the platform that led towards the buildings he'd noticed from the train.

Someone jostled him from behind and Jensen stumbled, whipping his head around.

"Hey!" he protested, but the shade who'd shoved him had already moved on. Another shade pushed past him with a particularly fierce shove of his shoulder and Jensen growled, shoving back.

He elbowed his way through the crowd towards a signpost leaning jauntily out of the ground not far from the head of the train. The number of locations it pointed towards was rather excessive for a single signpost and Jensen squinted at the words on the off chance that one of them was 'God of the Underworld's House'.

It was as he stood there, trying to figure what the hell a Phlegathon was and how it was supposed to be pronounced, that Jensen caught a glimpse of broad shoulders and brown hair in the corner of his eye and nearly sprained something when he spun around in shock.

"Jared!" he shouted. Jared didn't hear him so Jensen started running, trying to get closer. He muscled his way through the crowd as fast as he could, but shades edged in on every side, slowing him down despite his best efforts. "Dammit! Jared!"

Jared's steps didn't slow or falter, slowing carrying him further and further away from Jensen. Jensen swore.

"You don't get to walk away from me again, you fucker!" he shouted, shoving harder against the bodies in his way in his haste. "Jared!"

Jensen rebounded hard off someone's arm and tumbled to the floor, narrowly avoiding a foot in the face as he skidded belly-down across the rough paving. The crowd continued to swirl around him and Jensen pushed himself up with a ragged curse, careless of the red scratches tracking down his arms, the tender patches of skin on his thighs. 

Jared was nowhere to be seen when Jensen regained his feet and, for a heart-stopping moment, Jensen thought he'd lost him. He swept his eyes from one end of the platform to the other, refusing to entertain the idea that Jared had gone out into the mess of buildings and streets not thirty feet away. Jensen would never find him if he had.

Another shade bumped into him and Jensen had half-turned to punch the guy in his goddamn face when he saw Jared vanishing round a corner at the farthest end of the platform. Desire to do physical harm forgotten in a heartbeat, Jensen settled for pushing the shade out of his way and throwing himself in pursuit again, still yelling Jared's name. 

Jensen rounded the corner at full tilt, then immediately yelped and threw himself to the floor to avoid the dangerously sharp looking knife slicing through the air right towards his head. Rolling with the momentum, Jensen dusked away from another thrust and scuttled desperately backwards, wincing at the clanging protest of his guitar as the headstock scraped the floor.

His shoulder thudded against the corner of a wall and Jensen froze. The dull pain jarring down his back came a distant second to the realization that he had nowhere left to run.

"Fuck." Jensen's eyes slammed shut as his hands came up in an instinctive and utterly useless attempt to defend him from a knife through the chest.

A heartbeat passed. Then another.

Jensen cracked a cautious eye open.

There was a man standing maybe a dozen feet away from him, directly in front of a wide staircase cut into the side of the mountain. He was a monster of a man; he towered far above Jensen's own, quite respectable, height and his entire body was sleek and firmly muscled. His clothes were like nothing Jensen had ever seen before: dark purples and grays covered him literally from head to toe, the fabrics form fit and gleaming with a faint oily slickness. A massive pair of metal guards shaped like snarling dogs' heads protected his shoulders and the bands strapped around his wrists were scarred and pitted with age.

His skin was a smooth warm bronze and his eyes shone white and strange amid the wild shadows thrown across his face by his hood. A twin scar that looked like claw marks twisted the skin around his left eye. 

The knife that he'd tried to eviscerate Jensen with was thick-bladed and as long as Jensen's arm. Jensen very much didn't like the casual ease with which it fit to the grip of the man's hand.

A quick look around revealed no other ways into this area except for the one Jensen was currently plastered to and the staircase on the other side of Mr. Terrifying. Which meant that Jared had to have gone down those stairs. How Jared had managed that with that wall of scary-looking muscle in the way, Jensen had no idea, but he wasn't about to let that stop him. Probably.

Jensen looked again at the staircase. The edge of the top step was painted a bright safety-hazard yellow, which struck Jensen as being more than a little redundant. What difference did it make if the shade of a dead person fell down a set of stairs? It wasn't like it could kill itself again. 

Jensen returned his attention to the man with the knife, who hadn't so much as twitched the entire time Jensen had been sitting there. He was so perfectly still that Jensen would have thought that he was carved out of stone if not for the very visceral evidence he'd recently had to the contrary. His eyes had no pupils, Jensen noticed. Somehow, Jensen still knew he was looking right at him.

Finally, Jensen climbed shakily to his feet, ready to bolt at a moment's notice. The man did nothing but watch.

Emboldened, Jensen took a hesitant step closer. 

No change. 

He took another, and the guy's entire body tensed, winding in like a spring waiting to release. Jensen stepped back again and the guy returned to his still, wide-legged stance.

So it was some sort of proximity thing.

Jensen took a deep breath. "Okay." All he had to do was get to the staircase before the guy gutted him. Piece of cake. It worked all the time in the movies, right?

"This is so stupid," Jensen said to himself, then dug his heels into the ground and launched himself forward.

The guy reacted immediately, his whole body blurring into sudden, deadly motion. Jensen twisted desperately out of the way as the knife came whistling towards him. He stumbled, recovered, and kept running, eyes fixed on the stairs. Just a little fur-…

Pain.

Jensen staggered back hard, one hand coming up automatically to clutch at his side as the knife pulled free with a sharp, sucking jerk. Jensen's fingers met with wet warmth and he glanced down to see blood pooling between them, staining his shirt a bright, violent red.

"Oh," Jensen said faintly. 

The snarling muzzle of one of the guy's shoulder guards struck Jensen's arm with deadening force. Jensen reeled, thrown off balance, and another line of pain licked across his chest as the knife scored the skin just under his collar bone. The man shifted again, winding up for another strike and Jensen muzzily realized that he'd better do something to stop that. 

He wobbled back a few steps, gritting his teeth against his body's desire just to lay down and rest for a moment. As soon as he was out of range, the man drew up short and stepped back to his former position. Jensen's blood dripped off the edge of his knife to puddle on the floor. 

Jensen swayed on the spot for a moment, torn between the need to press onwards and the sure knowledge that another attempt _would_ get him killed. Finally, he found himself backing up, away from Jared, away from the staircase, away from their defender. Blank eyes tracked his every move and Jensen felt the burn of that gaze on his skin long after he'd rounded the corner and staggered away. 

The world swam in and out of focus in front of Jensen's eyes and every slow, heavy step sparked pain through his veins. The smell of blood was thick in his nose and his hands were sticky-wet. He couldn't hear anything over the uneven pounding of his pulse in his ears.

"Shit," he mumbled faintly. Everything felt dizzy. Dimly, he realized that he was sinking slowly down to the floor, his whole body curling up as much as the pain in his gut would allow. 

He wanted nothing more than to be able to just lie there and pass out for a while. But he didn't have time to be dying right now. Jensen panted through the pain, trying to find his arms long enough to push himself upright. One of his blood-slicked palms slipped on the floor and Jensen crashed back down with a pained moan.

The floor was cool against Jensen's cheek. He pushed his hands against the floor, getting ready to try again, but the world went fuzzy and black before he could manage it. 

This time, he didn't feel himself hit the floor at all.

\---

"Wow," said a voice from somewhere very far away. "You suck. I'm guessing you're a lover not a fighter, huh?"

Jensen swam slowly back to consciousness, letting the voice pull him out of the darkness. 

"You gonna get up any time soon?"

Concentrating hard, Jensen managed to blink his eyes open and found a man leaning over him, watching him with an amused expression that seemed somehow strangely familiar. The guy's hair was brown and overlong; it hung around his face like a shaggy mane and lent an otherworldly quality to his face that Jensen thought was fairly appropriate given the circumstances. His eyes were pale and piercing enough to be unnerving, though the laugh lines creased around their edges softened the effect. When he saw Jensen looking back, the guy grinned.

"Morning, sunshine," he said. "Sleep well?"

"Wha-?" Jensen shifted up onto his elbows without thinking, realizing only after he'd done so that it shouldn't have been that easy.

Confused, he looked down only to discover that the stab wound in his stomach and the gouge across his chest had both vanished. His shirt was white again and, when Jensen twisted round to look at the ground he was lying on, he couldn't see even the slightest hint of a bloodstain.

There _was_ a set of jagged holes in his shirt, though. Jensen wasn't sure if that made things better or worse.

"Shouldn't I be dead?" he asked. 

The guy's grin turned smugly self-satisfied. "You're welcome," he said, and shifted back to allow Jensen to sit up properly.

Jensen pulled himself upright, giving his rescuer an appraising look. The guy was wearing a yellow vest over a collared shirt and a pair of well-fitted pants that looked about a century out of date. His clothes were lived-in but well cared for and there was a red flower pinned to his vest over his heart. He looked, Jensen thought, like a cross between a big game hunter and a member of the landed gentry.

Unlike every other shade Jensen had seen so far, this guy wasn't even a little bit transparent.

The guy arched an eyebrow. "You really think staring at me is the most productive use of your time right now?"

"Sorry," Jensen said automatically. "Uh, thank you. For the…" Jensen made an absent gesture at himself that was meant to convey 'disappearing the big damn holes in my guts'.

"Don't mention it," the guy said. "Healing's not really my forte down here, but I manage well enough."

Jensen wondered if things were ever going to start making sense around here. "That's good, uh…"

"Oh," the guy said. "You can call me Chris down here, if you like. Less confusing."

"Less confusing than _what_? Rocket science?" Jensen didn't even try to disguise his incredulity. "What part of this insanity is supposed to be 'less confusing'?"

Chris rolled his eyes, patently unimpressed. "You're lucky you're talented enough to make the Muses jealous, because you're kind of a pain in my ass. Come on." Chris clapped a hand on Jensen's shoulder, then levered himself to his feet. "No point hanging around the station all day."

"Where are we going?" Jensen asked, though he was already rising to his feet. It wasn't like he had anywhere better to be, not when there was a murderous behemoth with a big ass knife guarding the way forward.

"My place," Chris said. He tossed a grin over his shoulder as they walked. "Figure I'd better keep a closer eye on you so you don't end up dead ahead of schedule."

"Speaking of dying…" They reached the edge of the platform and Chris stepped easily into the street. Jensen followed after him, taking care not to lose sight of him in the sudden crush of dead people. "Who was that guy? And why did he try to kill me?" 

"Trust me, if he'd actually tried to kill you, you'd be dead ten times over by now. You can think of him like a guard dog," Chris said, which wasn't really an answer. "It's his job to keep all sorts of personae non gratae out of the Underworld."

"You mean people who aren't dead."

"Give the boy a prize."

"But I'm already in the Underworld. Why not hack me up on the train?"

"There's the Underworld and there's the _Underworld_ ," Chris said as though the difference was obvious. He was, Jensen thought, quite possibly the most irritating person he'd ever met, and that was saying something. "It doesn't matter so much if you're stuck here."

Jensen glanced around at the buildings starting to crowd around them. They all looked to have been made out of bricks that were older than time, but there was no uniformity to the designs at all. Glass-walled condos stood alongside French villas while hovels made of mud and straw blocked the entrances to rows of Chinese pagodas. Jensen raised his eyebrows at a roller rink that was flanked on either side by a round-roofed chalet and what looked like an army recruiting base.

"Uh huh," he said. "And where is here, exactly?"

"Asphodel City," Chris answered. He tossed Jensen a grin. "The final resting place of the generally uninspired."

Jensen pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Like limbo?"

Chris shook his head in obvious despair. "You know, this Heaven versus Hell thing you've got going on is really kind of embarrassing. You don't have to _earn_ your way into the great ever after," he explained. "Asphodel isn't God's waiting room. Each shade gets a ticket to the part of the Underworld they belong in. But a lot of people aren't truly good or truly evil; they're just kind of middling. So they end up here."

"What, all of them?" Jensen looked around. "Kind of close quarters, aren't they?"

"I wouldn't worry about the physics of it," Chris advised. "You'll just make your head hurt. This way."

Chris led the way deeper into the city and Jensen's first impression was that he didn't have the faintest idea how anyone could navigate this place without getting lost a dozen times over. Roads went off seemingly wherever they liked, forking and winding around as though right angles were something to be avoided at all costs. The roads were full of shades going about their business in total silence, and Jensen marveled at all the different types of people mixed in together, not just from different cultures, but from different times in history. It was beyond bizarre to see a wild west cowboy walking down the street with a heavily tattooed fakir and an Eskimo, but he supposed it kind of explained the décor.

The longer they walked, however; the more Jensen noticed that there was something… strange about some of the shades.

"Uh," he said, his attention fixed on a woman in a shawl riding down the street on a goddamn tiger. She looked more like a shadow than a person, her features so faint as to be nearly indistinguishable. "Why are some of them more… see-through than others?"

"Depends on how much they remember about their lives," Chris said. "Hard to care what you're supposed to look like when you don't remember who you used to be."

Jensen tried to a Jared who was nothing but a faded outline, a Jared who couldn't remember his own name, let alone what his life with Jensen had been like, and felt sick.

"How… how long till they, um, vanish? Forever?"

"They don't," Chris said, and Jensen let out a relieved breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "Just because they don't remember being alive it doesn't mean they don't exist anymore." Chris gestured around them. "They look like they're pining for the fjords to you?"

Jensen decided to ignore the foray into modern pop culture. "Why aren't you see-through, then?"

"Because I'm not dead," Chris said, as though Jensen should have realized that right away. Maybe he should have; Chris certainly wasn't anything like the other shades. He could talk, for starters. "And no, I'm not like you, before you ask."

"Then wh-" 

Chris cut abruptly across a busy plaza that kind of reminded Jensen of pictures of Trafalgar Square, and Jensen was forced to drop the question in favour of jogging after him. A trio of shades got in his way and Jensen twisted past them only to collide hard with the shoulder of an African guy whose skin was so weathered he looked like he was made out of tanned leather.

Jensen staggered heavily, lurching forward a handful of steps until he caught his balance.

"Watch it!" he shouted after the guy, mostly to make himself feel better. The guy, of course, ignored him entirely.

"Still getting on well with the locals, I see," Chris said.

"Why can't they see me?" Jensen asked him.

"Oh, they can all see you," Chris said. "They just don't care."

"Well that's nice."

"Jensen, they're dead. What possible reason could they have to care about you?"

"I don't know," Jensen shot back. "What possible reason do _you_ have to care about me?"

Chris shrugged. "I've got a personal investment, don't I?"

"What's that supposed t-" Jensen broke off when he realized that he recognized the building they were heading towards.

"That's Steve's bar!" The street itself was unfamiliar, which Jensen couldn't appreciate enough - he didn't think he could have handled it if it was a mirror of the place where Jared… - but the building was absolutely _Roads_.

"More or less," Chris agreed. He gestured up and Jensen followed his gaze to the sign hanging above the door.

" _Rome_?" Jensen read. He looked back at Chris. "There a reference there I'm not getting?"

Chris smirked. "Almost certainly. Don't worry though, you'll get there eventually. Everybody does. Come on."

Aside from the name, the biggest difference between this bar and Steve's was immediately apparent the moment Jensen walked through the door: there was no roof.

"I've always been a fan of the courtyard look," Chris said, carrying on past Jensen and towards the bar. "And it's not like there's weather around here to worry about."

Jensen followed after him, skirting around the tables where clustered groups of shades were sitting and not talking. There was the shade of an older woman pouring drinks behind the bar. None of them played the slightest bit of attention to either Jensen or Chris.

"Take a seat," Chris invited. He hauled over a bar stool of his own and straddled it. "So," he said as Jensen sat down. "Where do you want to start?"

"Where's Jared?" Jensen asked immediately. 

Chris shrugged. "He's not here, if that's what you're asking."

Jensen bit back the first three responses that came to mind. "I kind of figured that. So where is he?"

"He's further in. Which shouldn't surprise you either. He's a good guy, your Jared."

"Yeah," Jensen said, softer than he'd intended. He shook himself out of it brusquely. "So I've got to figure out how to get past the scary guy with the knife so I can go find Jared."

"Yes and no. You've got to go past him, but you're not here to find Jared." 

Jensen started up out of his chair. "Wh-"

Chris held up a hand to forestall Jensen's instinctive protest. "Sit down. You're not here to find Jared," he repeated. "You're here to convince the lord of the Underworld to let Jared's shade return to the land of the living."

"Then why I am here?"

"Because one does not simply walk into Mordor," Chris said gravely. 

Jensen gave him a flat stare.

"Wow, you have no sense of humour at all, do you?" Jensen continued glaring and Chris sighed. "Getting past the guard dog doesn't mean you've got a key to the front door. You've got to get permission to meet with him first."

"Great." Jensen resisted the urge to bury his head in his hands. "Don't suppose you've got any good news for me, do you?"

"Hey, you're the one who decided to go against the natural order of everything to get your friend back from the dead. It was never going to be a cakewalk."

Jensen took a deep breath. "Okay. So how do I get permission to visit the boss of the Underworld?"

Chris grinned and held out a yellowing piece of paper covered in swirling black cursive. "You earn it."

Curious, Jensen took the page and skimmed it quickly. "You want me to play at your bar?" he said, confused. "What for?"

"Two reasons. One, living souls can't stay in the Underworld long-term unless they're under contract." 

"There are rules about living people in the afterlife? What the hell for?"

Chris pinched at the bridge of his nose, shutting his eyes. "Gods, save me from self-centred humans. Do you honestly believe that you're the only person in all of human history to get given the chance to regain the soul of a loved one?"

Jensen blinked. "I… hadn't really thought about it."

"Of course you hadn't."

"Okay, what gives?" Jensen narrowed his eyes at Chris' innocent expression. "One minute you're helping and the next you're insulting me. What are you getting out of all this? Shouldn't you be kicking me to the curb for daring to enter the Underworld?"

"After I went to the effort of getting you here in the first place? You really are as dumb as you are pretty, aren't you?"

Jensen was getting really fucking tired of this. "I've never seen you before."

"Unbelievable." Chris rolled his eyes. "I would have thought the bar would've tipped you off, but you mortals are always so resistant to the extraordinary. Look. A god doesn't have to wear the same face all the time, Jensen."

"You're a god?" Jensen asked, fighting his voice's urge to crack on the last word. 

"If that's how you want to phrase it, yeah." Chris shrugged again, that naggingly familiar gesture. It sparked a twinge of recognition in Jensen and he realized with a sudden jolt who else always shrugged like that. "I'm a busy guy, you know," Chris continued. "No time to waste running back and forth between jobs every ten seconds."

"But you just- wait." Jensen ran that through his head one more time. "Are you seriously telling me that you're-"

"Steve," Chris agreed. "Sometimes. Well, all the time, but also never. He's a lot more laid back, though, so don't expect any of that west coast surfer vibe from me."

Jensen shook his head. "I don't believe this."

"You've traveled to the _Underworld_ to find your dead best friend and convince the overlord of said Underworld to let him come back to life and the part you're having trouble with is that I can exist in more than one place at the same time? I think you gotta get your priorities straight there, buddy." 

Jensen didn't have any defense whatsoever against that so he coughed and changed the subject. "You said there were two reasons?"

Chris smirked, but didn't press the issue. "You need to do something to prove you deserve the chance to plead for Jared's soul. Music is your heart. If it can't earn you an audience, nothing will."

"Great." Jensen looked down at the contract. "So all I gotta do is sign this?"

"Mostly. But I need something in trade."

Jensen fought the urge to sigh. "Of course you do. Alright, lay it on me. What do you want?"

"Your voice."

"…I really hope that's another pop culture reference."

Chris grinned and stabbed a finger at the extremely small fine print at the bottom of the page. "'Fraid not. Points for creativity, though."

"This is crazy!" Jensen was on his feet again, gesturing broadly to convey the sheer idiocy of this idea. "How the hell am I supposed to convince the _King of the Underworld_ to let Jared go if I can't talk or sing? A frigging PowerPoint presentation? Charades?"

"You'll figure it out," Chris said, sounding supremely unconcerned.

"The hell I will!"

Chris gave him a bored look. "It really shouldn't bother you that much. How much help has your voice been up to now? Seems like you should be happy to have an excuse not to rely on it."

The words were like a punch in the gut. Jensen's heart gave a sickening lurch and his tirade faltered as his mind flooded with memories.

_All of his anger and hurt boiling up between them until they were both yelling and Jared was striding out of the bar to get away from him._

_The sickening smack of Jared's body hitting the hood because he didn't recognize Jensen's shouted warning for what it was._

_Shades everywhere, blocking Jensen's path, and all the hollering in the world wasn't enough to stop Jared's soul from walking away from him into the afterlife._

"That's…" Jensen tried. He deflated, overwhelmed by the realization of just how badly he'd let Jared down. 

Chris said nothing, apparently content to wait.

"Could I even leave now?" Jensen asked finally, even though he was pretty sure he'd already made his decision. "If I decided not to sign? Or am I stuck in the Underworld forever?"

Chris' stare turned assessing. Jensen did his best not to fidget. "I could work something out," he said finally, in a tone that didn't mean anything at all.

Jensen nodded. "And what happens if I do this, then can't-" Jensen swallowed. "Can't get Jared back?"

"Contract doesn't say anything about Jared," Chris said, which was as much an answer as Jensen needed. 

"Right." Jensen's jaw firmed. "You got a pen?"

Wordlessly, Chris handed him a pen with a ridiculous foofy feather on the end; it tickled against the side of Jensen's face as he leaned down to sign his name at the bottom of the contract.

The moment he finished the final flourish on the 's', Jensen felt a cold snap of air around him, sharp enough to make his ears pop and his lungs seize in his chest. The sensation only lasted a fraction of a second but still left him gasping, frantically sucking in great mouthfuls of air.

'That's it?' he tried to say once he'd recovered, but didn't manage anything more than a breathy exhale. 

He tried again with just as little success, despite the fact that Jensen could feel his throat contracting around the syllables; laughing and wheezing were just as impossible as speaking, apparently.

"Excellent." Chris rolled up the contract, then clapped Jensen on the shoulder. "Nice doing business with you. Now that that's sorted, you want a drink? On the house."

Jensen very much wanted a drink; he damn well deserved one. But his instinctive 'hell, yes' turned into nothing but empty air when he tried to voice it and Jensen huffed in silent frustration. He was about ready to climb over the bar to help himself if Chris didn't get the hint when he abruptly remembered the last thing Steve had said to him:

 _"Don't eat anything down there, no matter who gives it to you. Even if it's me."_

_Fuck everything_ , Jensen thought to himself. But he wasn't about to screw himself over now, so he very reluctantly shook his head and sat back down.

Chris grinned, looking unexpectedly pleased. "Good. At least you're listening to some of what I say. Keep it up. That's one of the most important rules: if you eat or drink anything down here, you'll never be able to leave. Not even the bossman himself could get you home again."

Holy shit. Jensen shuddered at the near miss. Then he glared at Chris for putting him in the situation in the first place.

"Hey, better to get the reminder from me now than to screw yourself over later. You ready to get to work?"

Jensen raised an eyebrow at him. 'Now?' he mouthed.

"You got anything better to do?" Chris asked. It was an unfortunately good point. "Go on, then. Play us some magic."

Jensen did a sharp double take at the phrasing and Chris grinned.

"Thought you'd like that. I'll be enjoying it Above too, don't you worry." He made a shooing motion with one hand. "Go ahead."

Jensen sighed and shuffled over to the chair Chris had pointed out. The entire room ignored him while he checked the tuning on his guitar - making faces over the scratches in the finish - and Jensen couldn't help but think this was a far cry from Steve's bar topside. 

But he wasn't going to get any closer to Jared by sitting around doing nothing, so Jensen dutifully organized his thoughts and struck the opening chord to _Hotel California_. It seemed an appropriate choice given the situation.

The first note rang cleanly through the air but Jensen faltered when every head in the room swiveled immediately towards him. He managed to turn the fumble into a flourish as he led into the song, but nearly lost the plot entirely when he opened his mouth to sing the first lines and got silence instead of dark desert highways. He kept right on singing the lyrics anyway, because he was nothing if not a stubborn son of a bitch.

The weight of empty eyes was on Jensen as he worked his way through the song, surprisingly disconcerting considering how often he played in public. When he brought the song to a close, the shades all started moving again, like they'd just woken up from a trance. A few of them kept looking at him for a moment longer, as if hoping that he'd play something else. 

Jensen threw a questioning look Chris' way.

Chris just shrugged. "Music always touches the soul. That's what it's for."

\---

So Jensen became the lounge singer special at _Rome_ , only with less singing and more sore fingers because even his well-built calluses couldn't keep up with the non-stop playing he was doing. 

To begin with, he'd played a lot of his own work - it was useful practice time, at least - but the lack of lyrics made everything feel unfinished and frustrating. He started throwing in other songs he knew, stuff from the songbooks his relatives still sent him for Christmas, things he'd memorized in long-ago music lessons, popular songs he'd added to his repertoire to alternately delight and irritate his friends. 

But there was only so many times he could run through _Fur Elise_ and _Texas Flood_ before he was about ready to strangle himself with his guitar strings. He started trying his hand at half-remembered tunes off the radio at work, the background music from the last film he'd seen, anything and everything his mind and fingers came up with.

After a while, it started getting hard to keep track of how long he'd been playing. 

The weather never shifted, Jensen never got hungry or tired or needed to piss, and there was no rhyme or reason that he could find to explain the comings and goings of the bar's patrons. His audience was eternally appreciative - at least, Jensen presumed so, what with all the staring - but the sheer uniformity of that scrutiny rendered it meaningless and easy to ignore. About the only time Jensen even noticed the shades was when they paid him for his efforts.

Even if he wasn't sure that 'paying' was quite the right word for it. 

Everything in the Underworld ran on tickets, just like the one that Jensen had used to get the train. Jensen's music collected them for him. Shades handed over bright strips of paper in return for Garth Brooks, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Springsteen. Tickets piled up at his feet like confetti, unused and unwanted.

There were tickets for the food Jensen couldn't eat, tickets for a movie theatre that Chris swore was close by but Jensen had never bothered to go find, tickets for apartments, tents and houses that Jensen didn't need since he didn't sleep.

Jensen couldn't have cared less. Not when none of them actually did anything useful.

"You can't expect the one you need to fall right into your lap," Chris said, into a rare moment of silence while Jensen rotated the stiffness out of his wrists. He fixed Jensen with a look that Jensen couldn't be bothered to try and read. "You think you'd even recognize it if it did?"

'Of course,' Jensen mouthed, but it was a vague thought at best. He gave his fingers a quick flex and brought them back to the strings. The opening strains of _Free Bird_ flowed out of his guitar and he relaxed, drifting away on the sound. 

Whatever he was looking for, it could wait another day.

Though he really would have appreciated knowing why he felt so worried about it.

\---

The realization, when it came, was sudden, unexpected and entirely not Jensen's doing.

"While I appreciate the irony," an unfamiliar voice said, and Jensen's hand jerked hard in the middle of his fourth or fiftieth rendition of _Stairway to Heaven_ , nearly snapping his high E string. "I'm a little disappointed that that's the best you can come up with."

Jensen looked up.

The woman standing in front of him smiled. "Jensen," she said kindly. Her voice sounded like laughter dancing on the wind. Jensen couldn't see through her, so she wasn't a shade, but she didn't feel like him or Chris, either. "You've got to do better than this."

 _Better than what?_ Jensen wanted to demand, and the sheer frustration of being unable to made heat rise up his cheeks. He gritted his teeth against the sensation and turned his attention deliberately back to his guitar, picking up the tune from where he'd dropped it and doing his level best to ignore her.

She made no objection to the brush-off and Jensen let himself fall back into the music, pulling himself higher in time with the perfect croon of his guitar.

"You have still got a voice you know," the woman said offhandedly and the strings squealed in protest when Jensen's fingers clenched tight on the fretboard. "You're just not using it right."

Jensen eased his grip on the guitar and glared at this not-dead woman with the bright eyes and the hair that lit up like a halo around her face who talked like she knew anything about Jensen. 'Fuck off,' he mouthed, shaping the words with careful precision.

Despite the murderous intent that Jensen was sure was written all over his face, her expression remained calm and surprisingly gentle. "How do you expect to survive in the Underworld when you're not remembering the important things?" she asked, and cocked her head. "Why are you here, Jensen?"

For a long moment, Jensen stared at her, unsure how to answer. He was there to play music, of course, but he didn't think that that was what she was asking. He was there to collect tickets, even though none of them ever seemed to be the right one because none of them could take him to…

'Jared,' he said, only nothing came out. The inability to say that name struck a painful nerve somewhere deep inside him. 

The woman smiled. "There you go." She leaned in closer, her face serious even though her eyes kept right on dancing. "So tell me, why are you wasting your voice on Led Zeppelin instead of telling everyone about the best things in your life?"

Jensen stared at her, shocked right out of the aimless fugue that he'd wrapped himself in.

Her smile turned affectionately cheeky and she winked at him. "Good luck, Jensen."

Jensen's attention snagged on the effortlessly graceful folds of her pale dress as she walked away and it wasn't until the door swung quietly shut behind her that he realized she was gone. He blinked at nothing for several long minutes, before looking down at his guitar like he'd never seen before. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Jensen could see Chris leaning against the wall by the bar, watching him intently. Jensen sat for a moment longer, then gave himself a deliberate shake and set his fingers back to the strings.

And this time the music was about him.

Somewhere behind him, Chris smiled in approval.

\---

The fog lifted from Jensen's mind at a slow but steady pace, leaving him horrified at how easily he'd fallen into it. Once he'd found himself again, he kept thoughts firmly fixed on who he was and who he was looking for, struggling to resist the forgetfulness threatening his memories.

The music helped. Jensen traded in the Top 40 and the best of the classical composers for threads and snippets of sounds that, half the time, couldn't even be called songs. He let his thoughts guide the music: he pulled out absent memories and channeled them through his guitar into all sorts of ungainly shapes that he'd never have tried giving voice to in the living world.

The shades didn't seem to mind the change. Jensen continued to receive tickets that weren't what he was looking for, but he took to using them as an impromptu guide to Asphodel. He started wandering around the city while he played, visiting the places he'd been given tickets to and giving the tickets away to shades who looked like they might appreciate them. And, as he went, he remembered.

A truly excessive amount of effort went into finding the movie theatre, where Jensen sat on the steps outside and played a ridiculous muddle of some of his favourite movie themes and the things feelings that came with them. _Star Wars_ was mixed in with a childlike glee for the originals and the vast disappointment he and Jared had felt after lining up half the night to go to the opening of the massive disaster that was _The Phantom Menace_. _The Lion King_ was Jared's twelfth birthday, _Pirates of the Caribbean_ was fuck yeah, pirates and _Mission Impossible_ was the simple, uncomplicated love of watching shit blow up. Jensen played until the crowd he'd gathered started blocking the doors to the theatre, then he stood and wandered off, still noodling away on the rendition of _Luck Be a Lady_ he'd played in the school band when Jared had unwisely decided to try his hand at musical theatre to impress the senior playing Sky Masterson. 

Jensen turned the housing tickets into the bone deep weariness of moving all his shit into his first real apartment, followed by a rippling arpeggio of laughter when Jared dropped a box full of cookbooks on his foot after mocking Jensen for being too sissy to carry it himself. Slow, languid trills in the lower registers sketched out lazy Sunday mornings and Jensen found himself smiling in time with the twang of laser gun fire as he duked it out with Jared in _Halo_.

Jensen spent ages trying to find music to fit with food - pizza while he and Jared ragged on each other's teams during the playoffs, loaded chili fries on a night out with the gang, burnt toast because Jared should never be allowed near any kitchen appliance ever - but he could never get farther than a wistful twirl of notes that reminded him how much he missed needing to eat before he gave up in disgust. 

At one point during his wanderings, Jensen found a graceful marble fountain wedged in between two gothic churches, and sat himself down on the edge, letting the splash of the water fill his ears and a whole forest of mental snapshots fill his music.

He'd spent a lot of time busking over the years, sometimes intentionally when he'd booked a spot with the city and sometimes when he'd been lost in his music somewhere public and had looked up to find a haphazard collection of coins and bills thrown at his feet. Perched on the fountain with shades making a loose ring around him, caught up in the music, Jensen couldn't help but remember those sunny day memories as well.

With nothing to limit it, his music went ever further into the abstract. The memory of the way the summertime threaded strands of copper fire through Jared's hair melted into a smooth, legato ripple of sound that felt like a lazy day at the beach. Jensen watched a pair of shades wandering around like they didn't have much of an idea of where they were going and added a Mediterranean flavour to the music in honour of the week he and Jared had spent getting thoroughly lost in Spain to celebrate Jensen's graduation.

At one point he threw in a bit of the _Flight of the Bumblebee_ to echo the sheer frustration he'd felt when Jared had inexplicably got his car covered in green paint at a Pride parade. Even that memory was precious - desire to commit homicide notwithstanding - and Jensen smiled, closing his eyes on a wry little sigh. At this rate, he was going to be writing odes to Jared's smile. The worst part was that Jensen didn't think he would mind, even if Jared never let him live it down.

Jared, Jared, Jared. It all came back to Jared and Jensen reveled in it, thinking back on happier times when that had been his reality, before Jared had started pretending that Jensen didn't exist.

His song shifted then, turning tentative and jerky as Jensen remembered the new distance between them. He turned anger into a sharp cacophony of broken scales, but they inevitably gave away to a plaintive croon that ached with confusion.

Jensen followed the decline of their relationship through his music, adding little tremolos and counter melodies for every strange look Jared had given him, every time Jared had stayed silent instead of saying what was on his mind. The song twisted with the uncertainty that Jensen should have noticed the slide happening, should have done something to stop it before it got so far. 

But no more. Jensen's jaw tightened and he added a decisive bend with a smooth curl of his fingers. After this was over and they were both alive again, he'd sit Jared down and _make_ him listen. Jensen was going to find out what the hell he'd done to deserve this distance and he was going to fix it. If Jared thought Jensen was going to give him up without a fight, he was an even bigger moron than Jensen had accused him of being when he went out with fucking Patrick Tyler in his freshman year. 

He'd come to the frigging Underworld for the man, and he wasn't going to be faced with the same indifference when they got back. Jared was the best part of Jensen's life, always had been, and, God, sometimes Jensen couldn't even breathe for how much he lo-…

Jensen's hands stilled abruptly as the rest of his brain caught up to that thought. The tone went suddenly sour with shock before clattering off into silence.

Holy shit, he was in love with Jared.

A pair of slippered feet intruded into the section of floor that Jensen was staring blankly at. He looked up to find the woman from before, the one with the sunshine smile, standing in front of him and smiling.

"Finally," she said, with so much gentleness in her tone that Jensen wondered if he was actually made of spun sugar and no one had told him. "That was beautiful."

 _Yeah,_ he thought sourly. _Nothing like an 'I'm in love with my dead best friend' song to brighten up the afterlife._

"Do you feel better now?" she asked. 

Jensen forced himself to consider the question honestly and was surprised to find that the answer was 'yes, sort of'. That'd probably change when he returned to life and had to deal with the fallout of being in ass over teakettle in love with someone who'd been treating him like shit for months, but for right now, it felt unexpectedly good to admit it. 

There was a strange lightness in his chest, as though a weight had been lifted from him that he hadn't known was there. When this was all over, Jensen was going to have to take some time to figure out just how long he'd been oblivious.

The woman cleared her throat lightly and Jensen jerked out of his musings to see her holding out a blue ticket. "Here. In return for the song."

Dumbly, Jensen took the ticket and read the neat white lettering on it.

_End of the line. One way only._

He looked back up at her, sure his incredulous 'seriously?' was scrawled all over his face. 

"You weren't in any state to deserve it before now," she said calmly. She winked. "And I don't think the best hits of Bad Company would have been very convincing."

Jensen wasn't really sure he'd be all that much more convincing with his own music, but he could see what she was getting at. 'Thank you,' he mouthed at her.

"You're very welcome. I have one more thing to give you." She leaned in close enough that her hair brushed against Jensen's collar and Jensen breathed in the scent of earth and rain. 

"There," she said, stepping back, and Jensen looked down to see a yellow flower threaded through one of the buttonholes on his jacket. "For soothing the savage beast. The rest is up to you now."

 _What's your name?_ Jensen wanted to ask her, but of course he couldn't.

Something in his expression made her smile, at least. "Good luck, Jensen," she said. "I'm sure you'll be just fine."

\---

"Fucking finally," Chris said, when Jensen burst into _Rome_ a handful of moments later with the ticket in one hand and the neck of his guitar in the other. "I thought you were never going to get your act together."

Jensen glared at him, hoping that his scowl aptly conveyed his exasperation. 

"Of course I knew," Chris said, in answer to Jensen's unspoken question. "God, remember? S'not my fault you took so long to get with the program."

Chris turned fully towards him, leaning his hip against the bar. The shift drew Jensen's attention to the flash of colour at the man's lapel and he realized that the red flower he usually wore had been replaced by a yellow one. A yellow one that looked just like the one Jensen was now sporting on his own jacket, in fact.

Chris followed his gaze. "What, you thought I got it from around here? The Underworld's a static place; nothing dies, nothing grows. We've got our lady for that."

'Who is she?' Jensen mouthed.

"Guess that means it's time for you to move on," Chris said instead of answering. "You're on your own from here on in."

Jensen wanted to protest, wanted to claim that he wasn't ready for this, but he knew that staying in Asphodel was more dangerous than the alternative. Even if he was about to go meet the king of the Underworld. So he nodded and held out his hand.

Chris smiled and grasped his hand firmly. " Good luck, Jensen. I'll see you on the other side."

\---

It wasn't until Jensen was halfway across the central platform and heading for the stairs down to the next train that he remembered the not-insignificant issue of the hulking terror with the big knife blocking his way.

 _Shit_ , Jensen thought, freezing mid-step. _I'm gonna to get shanked. Again._

A shade crashed into him from behind and Jensen elbowed her absently in the gut before starting forward again. The fuck was he supposed to do now?

Jensen's first thought was that maybe the ticket in his pocket would be enough to convince the guy to let him pass, but he wasn't any less alive now than he had been the first time so he wasn't exactly holding his breath. His second thought involved overpowering the guy, which seemed all kinds of impossible considering he still had no idea how to fight and couldn't exactly defend himself with a guitar.

Somehow, he doubted that playing a lullaby would help much.

Far too soon for his comfort, Jensen rounded the corner and found things just how he'd left them: staircase leading down into the mountain and big scary guy just waiting for Jensen to come close enough to stab. Jensen edged carefully forward, feeling his heart hammering hard in his chest. He got right up to the edge of the guy's bubble, then stopped. White eyes watched him silently.

Jensen rubbed a hand across his face and tried to think. There had to be a way out of this. Chris and the lady wouldn't have just let him wander to his death after all this effort, would they?

 _For soothing the savage beast,_ the voice of the lady echoed in the back of his head.

Jensen blinked. He glanced down at the flower on his shirt, back up at the solid wall of muscle blocking his way and down at the flower again.

 _Fuck. I really hope this works,_ he thought to himself. Jensen closed his eyes and, before he could lose his nerve, took a long, deliberate step forward.

Nothing happened.

Jensen cracked one eye open. Mr. Guard Dog hadn't so much as twitched a muscle and, while his attention was still fixed on Jensen, he seemed in no hurry to do anything about getting him out of his bubble.

If it was possible to melt with relief, Jensen would have been a puddle on the fucking floor.

Despite the fairly clear evidence that Jensen wasn't about to get disemboweled today, traveling the rest of the distance to the staircase was still one of the most nerve-wracking things Jensen had ever done. He kept an eye on the guard the entire time, just in case he decided to take a swing, after all. Nothing continued to happen and Jensen couldn't help a shaky, relieved breath when he finally reached the stairs. 

'Right,' he said not-quite aloud, because it didn't count as talking to himself when he couldn't actually talk. 'Let's do this'.

The staircase was lit with fluorescent lights and each wall had blue stripes painted along the top and bottom. Each step was wide enough for three people to walk abreast and edged with that same cautionary yellow. All in all, it reminded Jensen a lot of taking the subway in the real world, which was a nice change from all the eclectic crazy. After a couple of flights, however, the light started to flicker and dim and he swore to himself. He should have known it wouldn't be that easy.

The air grew progressively darker the further Jensen went, to the point that he had to put a hand up against the wall to make sure he kept his footing in the dark. Falling down the stairs and breaking his neck was still not high on his list of fun things to do while visiting the Underworld. 

Between one step and the next, the stairs abruptly melted into a steady, sharp incline and the wall under his hand became rough, uneven stone instead of slick tile.

It was too dark to see much of the way back, but Jensen backed up a few experimental steps and was not as surprised as he maybe should have been when he failed to encounter the bottom of the staircase he'd just been walking down. 

Honestly, Jensen was starting to think that half of the madness down here was someone showing off.

The sound of the train reached Jensen's ears long before he saw it, echoing hollowly in the dark. Jensen hurried eagerly towards the sound, more than ready to be on his way. Light started filtering into the tunnel, growing steadily brighter as Jensen advanced.

The tunnel opened onto a cave that was dominated by the waiting train and a platform that looked like it had been carved wholesale out of the bedrock. The rails went off at an oblique angle from where Jensen was standing, running in front of the train and vanishing into an arched tunnel. Chinese paper lanterns hung from the ceiling in bright, variegated colours.

Shades were already filing onto the train and Jensen hurriedly joined the back of the line, ticket fisted tightly in his hand. The ticket taker accepted it without a word of protest, but Jensen couldn't quite help the way he lingered by the door, discomfited despite himself by the heavy atmosphere on the train. The shades around him were so faint as to be practically invisible; Jensen nearly sat on the shade of a woman in a dress that might have been red or might just have been getting saturated by the colour of the seat cushion beneath.

Jensen decided to stand instead.

The doors slid shut and Jensen wobbled slightly as the train jerked to life. They passed under the heavy stone arch into the darkness beyond and Jensen braced himself for another endless tunnel winding through the mountain. He was immediately and pleasantly surprised when the blackness on the other side of the arch turned out to be not a tunnel at all, but some strange, shifting mass that seemed entirely at odds with the eternal daylight that Jensen had seen in the rest of the Underworld. The lights inside the train threw his reflection up against the window and Jensen leaned in close, pressing his face against the glass and cupping his hands around his eyes to try and get a better look. 

It was a forest, tangled and overgrown and more like something from a Grimm fairy tale than anything he'd ever seen in real life. He craned his neck as far as he could and realized that part of the reason why it was so dark was because the trees stretched up like a canopy above them, their branches twining together and hiding the sky. It was impossible to tell if there was any daylight beyond the leaves.

The train slid to a stop and a good dozen shades got up; Jensen shifted hurriedly out of their way before he got swept off the train as they filed off en masse. Jensen pressed his face back to the window to watch them go but their blurry outlines were all but invisible against the darkness.

The doors snicked shut and the train pulled away from the platform to continue on its way. Jensen watched the trees for a while, but the cloaking darkness and the fact that trees didn't do much at the best of times soon left him staring blankly at his reflection in the glass instead. He briefly entertained the thought of playing something to fill the silence, but he was tense enough that he figured he'd be more likely to snap a string than anything. 

So Jensen settled for standing there and being bored, though he was careful not to let his mind drift too far from the present. They made a few more stops and Jensen watched the train grow progressively emptier and the darkness outside grow progressively deeper. Unlike the first train, where shades only ever got on the train, on this one they all got off. Never on.

Jensen sincerely hoped that he was going to be an exception to that rule.

\---

By the time the train finally got to his stop, Jensen was alone in the car. Which felt more than a little ominous.

"End of the line!" a voice yelled and Jensen practically ran off the train. He wasn't keen on finding out what happened to anyone still on board when the train went out of service. 

The platform Jensen stepped out onto was small but surprisingly well kept. The black stones were clean, neatly fitted and showed few signs of wear. A single lamppost stood beside the steps, pushing back the darkness that loomed on all sides. 

Jensen nearly lost the back of his shirt when the doors snapped shut behind him. The train pulled away in a hiss of steam and was immediately swallowed up by the gloom. Which left Jensen stranded on a train platform in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on every side by ancient, otherworldly looking trees and armed for a confrontation with the god of the fucking dead with nothing but a guitar and a voice that didn't work.

When they got back to being alive, Jensen was going to tear Jared a new one for putting him through all this shit. 

Not entirely sure what he was supposed to be doing now, Jensen turned his back on the train tracks and took a look around. In the faint circle of light thrown by the lamppost, he could just make out the first few feet of what looked like a dirt path wending off into the trees vaguely to his left. The rest of the path was lost to the darkness. 

Hesitantly, Jensen stepped down off the platform and lingered at the edge of the lamppost's glow, goosebumps skittering up and down his arm. He glanced back at the empty space where the train had been. No going back that way.

'You can do this, Jensen,' he told himself firmly. 'Stop being such a pussy'.

His little pep talk was no help whatsoever, but Jensen knew the point of no return when he saw it and it had been the moment when Steve had asked him what he'd risk to bring Jared back. Jensen's answer was still 'everything'.

Jensen stepped boldly out into the dark.

Immediately, a string of lampposts lit up in front of him, racing ahead and illuminating the path. They were dim enough that they'd hardly have counted as lights at all if not for the immense blackness of the forest. Jensen was absolutely not about to complain.

The lights streaked out ahead of him as Jensen walked, never more than a foot or so ahead but more than enough for him to keep from straying off the path. A glance backwards revealed that the lampposts were going out again once he'd passed by them, letting the forest settle in again and leaving him with no direction to go but forwards.

The trees pressed in deep and heavy on all sides and Jensen felt himself curling inwards, shoulders hunching and chin dipping in to his chest at the oppressive atmosphere. Everything was deathly quiet: no rustling leaves, no chirping crickets, no calling birds. Jensen didn't think he'd ever experienced something so eerie.

Light gleamed abruptly through the trees, filtered and faint but still much brighter than the weak orange circles cast by the standing lampposts. Jensen quickened his pace, moving fast enough that his guitar bounced against his hip with every step and let out indignant twanging sounds in time with his stride.

Jensen wasn't expecting it when the trees opened up onto a wide clearing and he threw up a hand to shield his eyes from the painfully bright light cutting through the black. It was several long moments of wordless cursing and screwed shut eyes before Jensen's eyes adjusted to the sudden brilliance and let him get a proper look at the building he was standing in front of.

 _Pluto's Casino and Hotel_ said the massively big glowing marquis on the front of the building. And another sign just below it: _Half-price Martini night!_

Dumbfounded, Jensen stared at the tacky palm trees on the lawn and the rolling lights - the ceaseless flashing of which was sending shadows skittering like spiders across the leaves of the trees - and wondered if the Underworld could possibly get any weirder. He then immediately hoped that the lord of the Underworld didn't read minds and wouldn't take that as a challenge.

The stairs leading up to the main entrance were stately and imposing, glinting with the glossy sheen of well-worn marble, and the thick balustrades were intricately carved with a pattern of clinging, snaking ivy. The sound of Jensen's shoes tapping lightly against the stone steps was gunshot loud in the suffocating silence.

The door was flanked by a pair of dog-shaped statues: one sat stately and tall while the other crouched down and baring its teeth in a fearsome snarl. The sharp ridging on the teeth and the detail in the eyes reminded Jensen unpleasantly of the amour the guard defending the second train had worn.

He skirted carefully between the statues, keeping a wary eye out in case they decided to be alive and try to eat him - at this point, he wouldn't put anything past this place. The hissing of the door as it slid open made Jensen jump, not in the least because he'd never seen an automatic stone door before, and he scooted through quickly. 

The thud it made as it closed again behind him was ominously heavy.

The inside looked like, well, like a casino. The foyer was lofty and done in marble with a strange blue tint to it. The front desk was tidy and unmanned. The lights overhead were bright and garish enough to make the palm trees outside seem like the height of good taste. There was a large fountain in the middle of the room shaped like a woman holding a jar over one shoulder. Water cascaded out of the jar and ran down her body in gleaming rivulets, leaving her looking like she'd been caught in the rain; the translucent, clinging folds of her dress only added to the effect. A plaque was set in the plinth under her feet and Jensen stepped closer, curious.

 _Lethe_ , the sign said. And a little below: _Do Not Drink If You Value Your Memory_

Jensen made his way carefully forward, on alert for the faintest hint of movement. The air was cool nearly to the point of being uncomfortable and Jensen hugged his arms around himself, hands tucking under his jacket for warmth.

His footsteps were loud in the cavernous silence and it was with a sense of relief that he passed into the casino proper and the marble tiles gave way to midnight blue carpet that muffled the sound. He wandered through the banks of slot machines and out towards the gaming tables, looking for the faintest hint of how one went about finding a god in the middle of a casino. The machines pinged and whistled in time with the flashing lights, throwing out a siren song to gamblers who didn't exist. Jensen shivered, weirded out despite himself.

A clattering sound cut through the racket and Jensen looked forward to see and old-fashioned grill elevator rattling to a stop just beyond the fountain. Jensen headed towards it and watched as a pair of pale, bulbous hands reached through the grill to pull it open. 

Jensen stared.

"Elevator," the thing inside the elevator said, though Jensen couldn't have said for the life of him where in that mass of heavy white flesh the mouth was. It was dressed in a loincloth, an entirely ridiculous red hat and nothing else, which left an awful lot of body bare to Jensen's eyes. 

Its bulk filled up most of the elevator and it was a tight fit to squeeze Jensen into the elevator with it. The door rattled shut behind him and Jensen fidgeted in the confined space.

"Top floor," the elevator operator said and it wasn't really a question. Jensen nodded anyway. At least someone knew where he was going.

The elevator lurched into motion and Jensen felt his stomach drop out as they rocketed upwards far more quickly than Jensen suspected most self-respecting elevators would dare go. The floors flashed by too quickly for Jensen to catch anything more than random swathes of colour as they traveled up and up and up. 

When the elevator finally stopped, it was with an abrupt, mighty jerk that knocked Jensen right off his feet. He rebounded hard off the elevator operator's flab - its skin was harder than it looked - and ended up sprawled face down on the ground.

The operator pulled the doors open. "Top floor."

Jensen flailed an arm and managed to locate the back wall of the elevator; he dragged himself upright and caught his breath for a moment before edging his way out of the elevator. The doors clanged loudly shut behind him but Jensen didn't bother turning as the elevator rattled away again. He had better things to worry about.

The top floor was a luxurious penthouse suite artfully decorated in dark blues and vivid greens. The curtains were the colour of mint-chip ice cream, the carpet was some strange, swirly combination of navy and emerald, and there was green ivy painted along the tops of the walls and down each corner. The overall result was a little chaotic for Jensen's tastes, but the care that had been put into the design was easily apparent. 

The wall to Jensen's immediate left had something running down it that was either water or fire or both. It snaked down the wall like a living thing, before vanishing down a wide grill in the floor like some kind of flat, indoor waterfall. Jensen tilted his head, looking closer, and wondered idly what sort of damage that did to the room below.

"Welcome," a voice said into the silence. Every muscle in Jensen's body snapped immediately taut. "Turn around."

Jensen rotated obediently and found himself facing a man with blue, blue eyes and vaguely untamable hair sitting in a massive plush chair in the centre of the room. He was watching Jensen with an unreadable expression that Jensen wasn't sure he wanted to understand.

"Well," the man said, in a voice like the wrath of heaven. "And who do you think you are?"

Jensen's brain immediately offered up a wide variety of responses, including 'Jensen', 'Sorry, I've got the wrong room' and 'clearly, I'm a lunatic for even considering this'. Swallowing hard, he stood there blankly for a long moment, trying to figure out how the hell he was supposed to answer when he didn't have a voice. Just as he was about to mime asking for a pen, the guy offered him a surprisingly boyish grin.

"Oh, don't worry, Jensen, I know who you are." He winked. "I just wanted to make sure that you did."

Jensen was getting really fucking sick of smart-ass gods.

"You can call me Misha," the guy continued offhandedly, because apparently gods never introduced themselves with 'my name is'. "Come in, sit down. Coffee?"

Feeling more than a little lost, Jensen shook his head and stepped forward. The only piece of furniture near the chair was a low bench that was at once elegant enough to match the décor and austere enough to make Jensen feel like a schoolboy waiting to talk to the principal. 

"So," Misha said. His eyes really were very blue, Jensen noticed. The intensity in them made all the hair on Jensen's arms stand up on end. "It's been a long time since a live human wandered into my realm. The Messenger always did have a tendency to meddle." 

Jensen bit his lip, hoping that he wasn't getting Steve-Chris in trouble by being here.

Misha waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, don't worry about that. I'm very used to my nephew's proclivities. This is far from the most outrageous thing he's ever done. You wouldn't believe the stories I could tell." He grinned unexpectedly. "And if you're even half as talented as he says, I'm not going to object to the use of my time."

Which sounded like a good thing, but Jensen wasn't sure he even knew _how_ to relax at this point.

"And, of course, you've already earned the favour of my wife," Misha continued. He nodded at the flower still pinned to Jensen's shirt. "Which certainly stands you in good stead."

'Wife?' Jensen asked before he could help himself.

"Wife," Misha agreed, reading Jensen's lips with ease. "I'd warn you off, but unrequited love makes it easier to resist her charms. All that pining, you know."

Without the faintest idea of how he was meant to respond to that, Jensen settled for fisting his hands tighter in the fabric of his jeans. It was strange. Misha was being nothing but pleasant but Jensen still felt his flesh crawling. There was something _implacable_ about him that set him apart even from the other gods Jensen had met. It was quietly but inescapably terrifying. 

"Well." Misha sighed after a moment, when Jensen did nothing more engaging than stare at him. "I suppose we'd better get this over with. Come along then." He stood and walked away, leaving Jensen scrambling to follow after. Misha moved like smoke and his silver-black clothes flitted wraithlike in and out of the shadows in the room. 

Misha led the way to a doorway not far from the indoor waterfall. "Don't touch that," he said offhandedly. Jensen wasn't about to protest.

The they entered was high vaulted and broad. The walls, floors and ceiling were all sheathed in dark, inky marble that was contrasted by bright swathes of billowing fabric draped at even intervals along the wall. There was soft, white light filtering in from somewhere, but Jensen would be damned if he knew where from. 

"Here we go," Misha said, stepping aside to let Jensen enter. Jensen nodded his thanks and let his eyes skim around the room as he walked in to see-

He stumbled to a startled stop. 

'Jared?' he demanded incredulously. And it really was, standing on the other side of a row of marble columns that looked like they'd been stolen off the side of a Greek temple. Jensen was moving again instantly, hurrying across the floor with his arms outstretched and his mouth tripping uselessly over Jared's name again and again.

"Wouldn't do that if I was you," Misha called mildly, just as Jensen's fingers breached the gap between two of the columns.

A feeling like ice in shadow shocked through Jensen's arm, inexorable and deadly as it prowled through his veins and left numbing pain in its wake. Panicked, he yanking his arm away and stumbled back, gritting his teeth as his body shuddered with the aftershocks. 

"That's not a place for living souls," Misha said, belated and unhelpful. He came to stand beside Jensen and gave him a critical once-over. "Give it a minute and the darkness should recede. Good reflexes, by the way. Much longer and you might have lost that arm. Or the rest of you."

Well, that was ever so encouraging. Jensen did his best to ignore the slow, tingling return of life to his arm and focused his attention instead on Jared.

Jared was still stood in the same spot, placid and _right there_ even though he might as well have been on the moon for all Jensen that could reach him. He wasn't acting like he'd noticed Jensen's most recent brush with death and Jensen looked closer, trying to tell if Jared could see them through the columns.

It was about then that Jensen realized he could see through Jared. The sudden coldness that swept through him had nothing at all to do with the pain in his arm. 

"It's only to be expected," Misha said. "Do you know how long you've left him here? He's actually doing pretty well, considering."

No, actually, Jensen didn't know how long it had been. As if he didn't have enough things to feel guilty about. 

Misha's forehead creased in time with the faint frown on his face. "What are you blaming yourself for? You're here now. It's not like he knows any different. All you've done is made things more challenging for yourself."

Jensen tore his eyes away from Jared to raise a questioning eyebrow at Misha.

Misha shrugged. "What? You think I'm going to give you a soul that doesn't remember being alive? I'm not the only one you need to convince with this little plea." He glanced at Jensen and there was death in his gaze. "And I hope for your sake that you're _very_ convincing. You're here to beg for something that belongs to me, after all, and I have a tendency to be possessive."

Jensen stared at him, mouth suddenly dry.

This time, Misha's smile seemed the exact opposite of comforting. "You know, that's a good look for you. It's the eyes, I think. Green always shows fear so nicely. Go ahead," he said then, in a perfectly pleasant tone of voice. Whether he survived this or not, Jensen knew he was never going to be able to forget that voice. "Unless you'd rather stay here and work the poker table instead. Honestly, I'm fine with either option. May end up doing both if you're no good."

Jensen gave his arm a shake to rid it of the last tingles and started tuning his guitar on autopilot. His gaze drifted inexorably back to Jared, who looked as vacant as every other shade Jensen had met in the Underworld. Panicked, Jensen tried to focus on the familiar, _loved_ shape and not the horrifically faded quality to it. 

Jensen's fingers started pulling thoughtless warm ups out of the strings and Jared's attention focused on them immediately. _Music always touches the soul_ , Chris had said. Jensen reminded himself that this was Jared, who'd been listening to Jensen make music for practically their whole lives. This _would_ work. There was no other alternative.

"I may be immortal but I do have other things to do," Misha said.

Jensen nodded. He took a deep breath, looked straight into Jared's blank eyes and played.

It might have been beautiful. Jensen didn't know. All he knew was that it was every shred of joy and fear and love inside him, poured out into the only voice he had and probably the only that would ever have been capable of expressing the messy tangle of emotions he'd wrapped himself in. 

Jensen scraped his nerves rawer with every dancing shift of his fingers along the frets and he dropped his eyes out of sheer self-preservation. He couldn't cope if he was constantly watching Jared, scanning that familiar face for the slightest trace of recognition. This wasn't the Jared he needed to say these things to.

The song swirled through him like a living thing, filling the dead silence of the room with a heartbeat that thrummed down to Jensen's very soul. He couldn't have said how long he stood there, playing the song of Jared and his Jensen with all its imperfections and confusions and delights. All Jensen knew was that his chest was heaving and his fingertips were burning by the time he let the last achingly hopeful note fade into nothing. 

The absence of sound afterwards was like a punch in the gut.

Wrung out and trembling, Jensen stared down at his hands and managed several deep, heaving breaths before his need to know overwhelmed his fear and he looked up to seek out Jared's face.

The smile that he found there was fond and not the slightest bit transparent and Jensen felt his legs buckle.

Jared's mouth opened, shaping around a word, but he'd hardly voiced the first syllable when the air rippled between them and Jensen abruptly found himself facing a blank wall.

And then he remembered the other member of his audience.

Fear was riding high in Jensen's throat as he turned to see if he'd earned the approval of the lord of the Underworld.

Misha was smiling. The sight of crystalline tears frozen in the corners of Misha's eyes nearly made Jensen cry relieved tears of his own.

"Masterful," Misha said simply, and the sincerity in his voice turned the word rich and dark.

Jensen managed a nod.

Misha fished around in his pocket and pulled out a scrap of black paper. "Here," he said, holding out the ticket. "This will take you to the platform where you started your journey. You'll be able to get Above from there."

Jensen took it tentatively, still not quite sure what he was being told.

"Of course you pass," Misha said. "Even if you weren't beloved by the Muses, a love so deep deserves transcendence." Unexpectedly, Misha winked. "Just this once, though."

Jensen smiled broadly, trying to convey even a fraction of his gratitude. 

"Don't mention it. Seriously, don't. It's bad for my reputation and I don't want more heroes knocking on my door. I'm gonna have to ask you to head out now though. My family's heading in for our monthly casino night and you're just the kind of pretty that my sisters love." Misha paused, looking Jensen over with a thoughtful purse to his lips. "My brothers too, come to think of it. You might end up as a cup bearer for the rest of eternity."

That sounded like a perfectly terrible idea and Jensen hurriedly stuffed the ticket into his pocket and slung his guitar over his shoulder.

Misha put one hand on Jensen's shoulder to guide him out of the room and back to the elevator. Jensen could feel the icy chill of Misha's skin even through the fabric of his jacket. 

"It doesn't matter which train you get on," Misha said as they walked. "The conductor will tell you where to get off."

Jensen kept nodding all the way to the elevator, where Misha stopped and turned towards him.

"From this point you return to being a stranger in my realm," Misha warned. "You must go straight to the platform and stay on the train until you reach your stop. No side trips. No attempts to backtrack or return. No searching through the train. Jared will follow after, but only if you obey these rules. Understood?"

Jensen nodded hastily and a boyish grin spread across Misha's face.

"This has been a delight for me," he said. "Well worth the return of a soul. I trust you will play for me again when it is your time to return permanently."

Figuring that a handshake wasn't quite formal enough for the situation, Jensen went instead for a deep bow that made Misha's mouth twitch in what looked like a combination of amusement and approval.

The elevator binged at Jensen's back and Misha gave him a careless wave. "Go on, then, Jensen Ackles. Enjoy your life and I shall look forward to our next meeting."

Which was creepy as hell, and it was something of a struggle for Jensen to keep his expression neutral as he edged his way into the elevator and watched the doors rattle shut behind him. The elevator operator didn't bother saying anything to Jensen this time; the elevator dropped as soon as the doors closed, leaving Misha watching through the grill until they'd passed down to the floor below.

Once they were out of sight, Jensen slumped one shoulder back against the elevator operator's excessive bulk and took a brief moment to fall apart. He'd done it. He'd actually fucking done it. And apparently been kind of advance scouted by the god of the Underworld in the process, but Jensen couldn't even bring himself to care right now. 

He was getting Jared back.

Their arrival on the first floor was very nearly as violent as the one at the penthouse had been, though this time Jensen managed to brace himself between the wall and the operator well enough to keep from falling over. The elevator doors rattled open onto the casino floor. 

"First floor," the operator said, and Jensen gave it an absent wave as he headed off. 

The casino was just as empty and generally ghost town-y as it had been on the way in. Jensen didn't bother with subtlety this time: he dashed through the blinking lights and marble walls at a dead run, not because he feared that something was going to come after him, but because he was so beyond ready to get out of the Underworld.

The world outside was still dark and ominous but the air was significantly warmer than it had been in the casino, which Jensen appreciated. He headed for the lone gleaming lamppost that marked the path back to the train platform. Everything inside of him was urging him to move faster, to get there as soon as possible, but Jensen had no desire to get lost in the black if he outpaced the lampposts so he forced himself to walk.

It felt like an eternity before the platform came into view and Jensen permitted himself a pleased smile when he was finally stood at the edge of the train tracks. His fingers sought out the ticket still in pocket and Jensen fisted his hand around it, taking comfort in the solid presence of it while he settled in to wait.

And wait. 

And wait.

By the time the train finally rolled up to the platform, Jensen was half-mad from impatience. It didn't even matter that he didn't know how long he'd actually been standing there; all he knew was that it had felt like forever and it was torturous.

The train car was empty save for the ticket-taker, who took Jensen's black ticket and disappeared towards the front of the train. Jensen sat in the seat closest to the door, watching his reflection in the window as the train rolled into motion. 

The black landscape rolled past at what felt like a snail's pace and it was only by dint of will that Jensen refrained from pacing back and forth and wearing an impatient hole in the floor. 

When the scenery finally did change, it was with a suddenness that had Jensen wondering if he'd done the impossible and fallen asleep while he hadn't been paying attention. The black forest turned into familiar green fields between one heartbeat and the next and, though Jensen craned his neck back in the direction they'd come from, there was no sign that the forest had ever existed at all.

It wasn't long after that that the train slowed and Jensen's heart rate spiked as he jumped to his feet. But instead of the quiet little platform Jensen had started from, the train opened on another, unfamiliar, platform that had a handful of shades waiting on it. The ticket taker reappeared and Jensen slumped back down as the shades filed onto the train, their green tickets and the fact that they looked nearly solid making it clear that they were new arrivals. More evidence that the Underworld had a thing for ignoring the rules of physics. 

The doors slid shut again and Jensen jittered silently as the train pulled away to continue its journey. The next time the train stopped, Jensen was standing immediately, only to be disappointed again as more shades got on and the train went on its merry way. The third through fifth times, Jensen had to talk himself out of heading up to the engine room and beating the driver to second death with his guitar. After that he kind of lost count and slumped in his seat kicking disconsolately at the floorboards every time the train pulled in to a platform and left again without anyone telling him it was okay to get off.

"Last stop for living souls!" a voice called unexpectedly and Jensen jolted upright in surprise; he'd hardly even noticed the train slowing down. A quick glance out the window let Jensen see a familiar platform; he lurched awkwardly to his feet, heart pounding double time, and practically ran for the door. No one cared enough to watch him go.

There was a brief commotion on the platform as Jensen tried to get off the train while a handful of shades tried to get on and Jensen was feeling mussed and harried by the time he fought himself free from the crowd and staked out an empty patch of platform. He panted in a combination of adrenaline and anticipation, watching as shades shuffled forward to hand their passes over one-by-one to the ticket taker. The crowd thinned at an agonizingly slow place, until finally the last shades climbed onto the train.

Jared wasn't on the platform. 

Jensen swallowed hard, fighting to ignore the feeling of his heart dropping into his boots. He turned his attention to the train, sure that Jared was just being a slow ass and keeping him waiting to irritate him. He was always doing stuff like that. 

No one got off the train.

Jensen bit his lip, his whole body inclining forwards as though getting closer would make Jared get off the damn train already.

The doors slid shut. 

Jensen watched helplessly as the train pulled away, leaving him standing there. Alone.

Numbly, Jensen stared down the tracks until the train disappeared over the horizon. Then he stood there a while longer, wondering how long he could stay before someone showed up to make him leave. Not that he would let them. He wasn't leaving, not without-

"Jensen."

Jensen's heart stopped. He sucked in a sharp breath and then, so slowly that he wasn't sure he was actually moving, he turned around.

Jared still had the faint translucence of every shade Jensen had met in the Underworld, but whereas before Jensen had hardly been able to recognize the faded planes of his face, now Jared looked nearly whole. His mouth was curled up into a quiet, content little smile that Jensen didn't think he'd ever seen before.

"Jared," Jensen said before he'd thought about it, and was startled when his voice obeyed him. The name came out whisper soft like a confession. Or a promise.

"Hi," Jared said, and Jensen stumbled down off the platform, missing a step and nearly ending up on his face before coming to a stop in front of Jared, so close that he had to crane his neck to look up into familiar hazel eyes.

He wrapped a hand around Jared's neck and hauled him down, burying his head in the juncture of Jared's collarbone like he never wanted to move again. Jared hugged him back just as hard, arms tightening around Jensen's shoulders and waist hard enough to make Jensen's bones creak. Jensen was vaguely appalled to feel tears pricking at his eyes but he figured he damn well deserved them. Jared held him silently and made no comment on the way Jensen's shoulders were shaking.

They stood there for a long time while Jensen got a grip on himself, but it still felt like tearing off one of his own limbs when he finally loosened his grip enough to step back.

"God dammit, Jared," he said, thickly. "You ever do that to me again and I'll never forgive you."

"I'm sorry," Jared said, and Jensen could hear the sincerity in his voice. "I never meant to hurt you. Before I died, I mean. I didn't mean to do that either, obviously, but I should never hav-"

"So I'm in love with you," Jensen blurted, with all the confidence he could muster. It still came out tentative and embarrassingly shy. "I mean, you probably figured that out already and I know I'm an idiot for not noticing sooner, but now that I do I'm not going to be able to pretend I don't feel that way. Not that I expect it to change anything. But I…" Jensen faltered, ducking his head. "I don't know why you've been avoiding me or if there's anything I did wrong that I can… apologize for or something, but you have to tell me because I hated not having you around and you dying half fucking destroyed me and don't know how I'll manage if you drop me like that ag…"

Jensen's voice cracked and he trailed off into awkward silence. He could feel Jared watching him. Jensen stared at his scuffed shoes because this was even worse than fearing he'd see nothing of his Jared in the shade standing in front of him. Because this _was_ his Jared and Jensen didn't think he could survive it if he still didn't want Jensen around.

Jared said nothing for a long moment and Jensen held his breath, bracing himself for whatever was coming.

"It's because you're so talented," Jared said finally, which was quite possibly the last thing Jensen had expected him to say.

Jensen looked up sharply and found Jared looking soft and sorrowful. "What?"

"Your music is more than just music," Jared said. A touch of wistful awe curved the edge of Jared's words. "It has life and power and it _changes_ people, listening to you. Hell," Jared laughed, a little disbelieving, "from what I can tell, you just used a song to convince the devil to let me come back to life again."

"He's not the devil," Jensen said automatically, because he couldn't gather up enough of his brain to address the important parts of what Jared was saying. "He's the god of the afterlife."

"Doesn't change my point. Jensen, it's impossible for people not to love you when you've got an instrument in hand. And I…"

"And you what?" Jensen demanded. He stepped back into Jared's space and tilted his head to look up into Jared's face. "Jared."

Jared's eyes cut to the side for a moment before swinging resolutely back. "And I already loved you," he said and Jensen's heart caught in his chest. "With or without the music. Have, for a while. So it just got to be… too much to watch you play." Jared smiled a helpless, tender sort of smile. "You're something amazing, Jensen. But I didn't want you to know, since I didn't think you… and I didn't want to ruin our friendship, only then I ended up making things worse."

Jensen was having trouble breathing. "You're in love with me?"

"I am," Jared said. "And I'm so sorry I hurt you."

"Me too," Jensen said, meaning it. He smiled shyly. "I should have knocked some sense into you sooner." 

Jared smiled back. "Or into yourself," he suggested.

Jensen took a deep breath. "That song I played was about you," Jensen said, and it was surprisingly easy to say even with the way his insides were squirming. "All of it." 

"It was beautiful," Jared said, solemn and honest.

"Yeah, well," Jensen tried a shrug and did a shit job at making it look casual. "Apparently true love makes for quality entertainment. Guess I should have been writing songs about you all along, huh?"

Jared's expression went suddenly bashful. "I kind of like being the only one who got to hear it," he admitted. "Besides the god of the afterlife, I guess."

"Jesus Christ," Jensen said. "Why the hell aren't we kissing yet?"

Jared lifted a hand to Jensen's cheek and leaned in with a smile. "Good question."

Jensen met him halfway, hooking his arm again around Jared's neck to keep him right where he wanted him. Their lips brushed lightly once, twice and then Jared's fingers tilted Jensen's chin to the side and they were kissing properly, fitting together so neatly that Jensen couldn't bring himself to object to the strain in his neck. The kiss was gentle, curious and just a little hesitant and it was absolutely perfect. Jensen sighed contentedly into Jared's mouth and felt Jared's answering chuckle buzz against his lips.

"I've wanted to do that for so long," he murmured, and the expression on his face made Jensen flush.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I didn't mean to keep you waiting."

"It was worth it." Jared leaned back in, his mouth whispering right against Jensen cheek. "But next time I expect you to write me a song with words in it." 

Jensen smiled. "I can do that."

Jared's answering smile warmed Jensen right down to the ground. "I'll look forward to it." He gave Jensen another quick peck before straightening and looking around at the scenery like he'd never seen it before. For all Jensen knew, he hadn't; it was hard to tell how much of anything shades actually saw. He'd have to ask, later. "You have the faintest idea how to get out of here?"

Jensen laughed. "More or less. I'm sure we'll figure it out. Now come on," he said, hooking his fingers in Jared's belt loop. Jared's arm draped warm and solid over his shoulders as they fell into step. It felt good, right, and Jensen firmly told himself not to be such a fucking girl. "I haven't eaten or slept in Misha only knows how long. I want a hamburger and a good night's sleep like you wouldn't fucking believe."


End file.
